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The Wolf of Wall Street made for an intriguing, if rather long, cinema outing, but it’s certainly worth a re-watch on Blu-ray.
The film tells the real-life tale of Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker and playboy who was making almost a million dollars a week by the time he was 26 years old.
Starting at the bottom in a boiler room with Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey), his boss who takes an instant shine to him and gives him some tips on how to get through the day, which partly involves shoving various powders up one’s nose, Jordan is determined to stay the course, stay clean and work towards his qualifications.
Six months after starting, on October 19th, 1987, he becomes a qualified stockbroker and ready to take on the world, so to speak, but that also happens to be Black Monday, the day the stockmarket took a massive tumble of over 500 points. Within a month, the company was shut down and Jordan ended up working in a place called Investors Centre, a small company that deals in penny stocks, selling to people who can’t afford them in large number.
Jordan’s talent allows him to impress upon potential clients – or “schmucks” as they keep referring to them – that these companies will soon be worth a fortune. As he goes on to build up his own empire, Stratton Oakmont, a newspaper exposé reveals his dodgy practices and dubs him “The Wolf of Wall Street”, hence the film’s title, and the tale is told from there, with the FBI taking an interest in his activities before too long.
The Wolf of Wall Street rattles along at a decent pace, but you can’t escape the fact that it definitely does *feel* like a three hour film.
Check out page 2 for more thoughts on the film.
Leonardo DiCaprio embodies the role of Jordan Belfort and plays it perfectly, but it does have a feeling of Goodfellas 20 years on, but with stockbrokers intead of mafia, and with DiCaprio instead of Liotta, since there are times when he’s addressing the audience directly, right in the middle of a scene, in front of everyone. Scorsese has every right to use this technique, and I can see why he has, but there’s something about its use here that just feels a bit off.
Margot Robbie plays Naomi, the model who was to later become his wife, and who is played with a voice like Lois Griffin from Family Guy. I can only presume that’s her real voice. There’s also great support from Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff, who lives in the same low-rent apartment as Jordan early on in the film and who ends up working for him, Matthew McConaughey‘s all-too brief appearance as Mark Hanna, Rob Reiner as Jordan’s father Max, and a great turn from Kyle Chandler as FBI Agent Patrick Denham.
The Wolf of Wall Street has broken all records for the number of swear words in a film. The total is around 500, but it does help that it’s a very long film so it can fit that many in. On another comparison, Goodfellas also broke the record at the time with around 250 f-words.
On BBC’s Breakfast, on Monday January 13th, BBFC Acting Director Mark Austin (below) was interviewed to discuss this. As you can see in this video, he explains that it’s not just the swearing that garnered the film an 18-certificate, but also certain other scenes, and as he describes them, it causes Susanna Reid to wonder whether Breakfast should also be classified 18!
Conversely, Dubai have censored the film such that around 45 minutes have been excised, including scenes regarding sex and drug-taking, leaving the film “incomprehensible” and angering film buffs.
In addition, there are a handful of odd little continuity errors here and there, such as when people are looking in different directions between camera cuts, and also in one early scene where Belfort first meets Jonah Hill’s character, the camera view changes and Jordan’s still talking while he’s now seen to be eating.
Overall, The Wolf of Wall Street is a long three hours, but it does need that time to tell the story. And it’s a good story, but it’s a hell of a lot to take in, in one go.
The Wolf of Wall Street is out now on Blu-ray, DVD and Limited Edition Blu-ray Steelbook.
Go to page 3 for the presentation and the extras.
The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio and is crisp and sharp, looking at its best when showing off bright, daytime scenes but there are no faults with the image.
For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 50″ Plasma screen with a Samsung BDP1500 player.
Audio-wise, this is mostly an ambience- and dialogue-driven piece as there’s only one character onscreen and precious little dialogue, but the audio is clear and does everything it needs to without a hitch.
The extras are as follows, but while they’re all in HD, there’s precious little to get excited about:
- The Wolf Pack (17:00): A fairly standard making-of with chat from all the key chat and crew members, all mixed in with clips from the film and behind-the-scenes shots.
- Running Wild (11:19): A look at the financing including how it was originally slated to be filmed in 2008, but thanks to the economy crashing, this project was deemed too big to take on, as well as discussing more general aspects about the story.
- Round Table (10:56): De Caprio, Scorsese, Hill and others sit round a round table and talk more about making the film.
And that’s it. No deleted scenes, no trailers, no nothing. The film runs for three hours, and a reported director’s cut goes on for around four, so there must be more footage. Perhaps they’re saving it all for a special edition?
There are subtitles in oodles of languages (see below) but unfortunately, while 20 chapters would be okay for a lot of films, this one lasts so long that it definitely needs more. I always go by the rule of thumb for one every five minutes.
|
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
7 10 7 3 |
| OVERALL | 8 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 180 minutes
Studio: Universal Pictures
Cat.no.: 8297283
Year: 2013
Released: May 19th 2014
Chapters: 20
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Latin American Spanish
Subtitles: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (several formats used)
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Martin Scorsese
Producers: Riza Aziz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joey McFarland, Martin Scorsese and Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Screenplay: Terence Winter (based on the book by Jordan Belfort)
Cast:
Jordan Belfort: Leonardo DiCaprio
Donnie Azoff: Jonah Hill
Naomi Lapaglia: Margot Robbie
Mark Hanna: Matthew McConaughey
Agent Patrick Denham: Kyle Chandler
Max Belfort: Rob Reiner
Brad: Jon Bernthal
Manny Riskin: Jon Favreau
Jean Jacques Saurel: Jean Dujardin
Aunt Emma: Joanna Lumley
Teresa Petrillo: Cristin Milioti
Leah Belfort: Christine Ebersole
Captain Ted Beecham: Shea Whigham
Chantalle: Katarina Cas
Nicky Koskoff (‘Rugrat’): PJ Byrne
Chester Ming: Kenneth Choi
Robbie Feinberg (‘Pinhead’): Brian Sacca
Alden Kupferberg (‘Sea Otter’): Henry Zebrowski
Toby Welch: Ethan Suplee
Peter DeBlasio: Barry Rothbart
Steve Madden: Jake Hoffman
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.