Reviews for this film from our members:
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Il nuovo film di Martin Scorsese è il racconto, feroce e travolgente, di un’ambizione senza confini. Il suo ritratto del microcosmo dei broker di Wall Street è più efficace di un trattato di antropologia culturale.
- Mario Alegre @ Primera Hora [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Scorsese hasn’t been this radical since the criminally underrated Bringing Out the Dead. It’s like watching the man behind Taxi Driver directing his version of Superbad or The Hangover.
- [New – 4/3/14] | Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- Excerpt: Vuk je možda najsmješniji, a može se reci i najzabavniji od svih Scorsejevih filmova.
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: The dark turn that we’re right to expect in this kind of story comes with unexpected impact and flinch-inducing violence, and that’s when the full force of Scorsese’s skill becomes apparent. We’ve been so busy laughing that we didn’t notice he slipped the knife in — until he turns it.
- Danny Baldwin @ Critic Speak
- Excerpt: Superficial readings of Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” characterize the movie as a microcosmic look at the gluttony and corruption of America’s so-called “One Percent,” but it’s actually a broader comment on our society’s confused moral compass.
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: There’s a concern to be voiced that making a movie like The Wolf of Wall Street in the way that Scorsese has made it will end up appealing to exactly the people it’s attempting to flay. Scorsese heads that argument off at the pass by asserting that those people, the one percent, are beyond reach anyway.
- Luke Bonanno @ DVDizzy.com
- Excerpt: It’s a bit tough to align with the film’s point-of-view, as it wants us to chuckle at what is no laughing matter, the antics of a despicably unscrupled character.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An over-the-top portrait of a cynical head of brokerage firm which vividly shows the soul rot afoot in America.
- Enrique Buchichio @ Cartelera.com.uy [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Scorsese construye su relato de manera maestra, comenzándolo en un punto alto y sin bajar la intensidad en ningún momento a lo largo de tres horas. DiCaprio ofrece probablemente una de las mejores interpretaciones de su carrera.
- Bill Clark @ From The Balcony
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: In his best scene, DiCaprio displays a knack for physical comedy heretofore unearthed as he makes his way to his Ferrari legless on an overdose of particularly powerful ‘ludes.
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: …the nasty, too lenient representation of the exact kind of animal that continues to prey on the most gullible, most desperate of us in this financially uncertain climate.
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Martin Scorsese se ha vuelto muy juguetón, y hace que el espectador se parta de risa.
- Michael Dequina @ TheMovieReport.com
- Billy Donnelly @ This Is Infamous
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Scorsese doesn’t actively condemn these characters in the way a traditional moralist would… He allows the characters to damn themselves.
- Glenn Dunks @ Glenn Dunks, Writing
- Excerpt: I struggle to recognise what his unique point of view or fresh insight is with the material. Did he have one?
- Kimberly Gadette @ Doddle
- Excerpt: Before the rise of the economic echelon currently referred to as the one percent, there was Jordan Belfort … the one percent of the one percent.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Cynical, unconventional and edgy – it’s horrifying and absurdly hilarious.
- John Hanlon @ JohnHanlonReviews.com
- Excerpt: A superficial spectacle helmed by the brilliant Martin Scorsese.
- Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Far from being a failure of moral perspective, as some have claimed, it actually is a coup of such perspective because it refuses to let the audience off the hook and feel superior. There is, rather, a coldly precise indictment of the world that created Jordan, sustained by fantasies of what he enacted, living on the profits of a common dream of something for nothing, elevating the dark arts of the few at the expense of the many.
- Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Director Martin Scorsese considers the true story, then extracts every ounce of hype and offers it to the masses as a fascinating piece of flamboyant entertainment. It’s a fictionalization of Jordan Belfort’s life and Leonardo DiCaprio embodies that man.
- Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: My first thought after the credits rolled on Martin Scorsese’s 3-hour symphony of greed and depravity was, “How in the hell did this not get an NC-17 rating”???
- Blake Howard @ Graffiti with Punctuation
- Excerpt: Scorsese’s mastery is undeniable; The Wolf of Wall Street is yet another magnum opus.
- Dan Jardine @ Cinemania
- Excerpt: a Bluto meets Gordon Gecko treatment that lacks the knee slapping humour of the former (though the quaalude scene IS pretty funny) and the moral outrage of the latter.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A debauched end-of-empire horror story disguised as an outrageous comedy, with remarkable performances from Leonard DiCaprio and Jonah Hill.
- Daniel Kelly @ Danland
- Excerpt: I strongly suspect the film will mean more to future generations as a window into the 21st century perversion of the American Dream, detailing a set of individuals who make Gordon Gekko seem like Mother Teresa.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Alternately exhilarating and exhausting at a running time just short of three hours, “The Wolf of Wall Street” is an invigoratingly decadent and rollickingly amoral frenzy. Never has a Scorsese film had so much cheek, and not just the literal, objectified kind.
- Oktay Ege Kozak @ Oregon Herald
- Excerpt: It’s been a long time since a movie made me feel genuine ill will towards its protagonists. Considering I sat through Spring Breakers and Grown Ups 2 in 2013, that’s quite a feat. There’s a scene in Martin Scorsese’s latest gangster opus where one of the main characters almost chokes to death on a piece of ham and I was on Team Ham the whole way.
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: … almost as Scorsese, in his rush to sate every sophomoric urge, ceded the reins to shock-jock Howard Stern.
- Carson Lund @ In Review Online
- Excerpt: If Martin Scorsese’s last film, Hugo, suggested the septuagenarian American filmmaker gallantly paying his respects to the regal masters of cinema’s past, The Wolf of Wall Street shows the director joyously purging his soul of all the bloody, drugged-up, foul-mouthed naughtiness that defined his early career.
- James Madden @ Film Blerg
- James Marsh @ The Society For Film
- Excerpt: In their fifth screen collaboration, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio produce the funniest work of their careers in this debauched and riotously indulgent black comedy depicting the rise and fall of Wall Street stockbroker Jordan Belfort.
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: The point, and arguably the fun of the film, is that each member of the audience can either watch critically or be fooled by the emotion. Or they can simply watch in awe of the audacity of it all since this is Scorsese’s bravest, riskiest and most vibrant film since Goodfellas.
- Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood
- Excerpt: Crude, crass, and manic, “The Wolf of Wall Street” is the most fun Martin Scorsese has had in years.
- Nell Minow @ The Movie Mom
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: The Wolf of Wall Street thrusts Martin Scorsese balls deep into the squealing hog of American capitalism.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: Going after Wall Street with the same whirlwind flair he brought to organized crime in Goodfellas and Casino (hey, what’s the difference?), Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street shares a lot in common with his mob-centered epics – and it’s the director’s best film since those two came out twenty-plus years ago.
- Jamie S. Rich @ DVD Talk
- Excerpt: The Wolf of Wall Street is agile and wicked and depraved. The tempo of the piece morphs based on the drugs the participants are taking. Energized and exaggerated when it’s uppers, elastic and twisted and crawling at a snail’s pace when downers.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The movie is astonishingly repetitious. Scorsese wows with his filmmaking virtuosity, and then goes around again with the same kind of material, so that after a while you’re looking at your watch and wondering how far into the three hour running time you’ve made it, and discovering that there are still a couple of hours to go.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: This is a raunchy, messy, but ultimately exciting film about one guy who desires everything and gets it. If it seems a bit too long, that’s only because it is playing to the theme of wretched excess.
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Belfort as a young Gordon Gekko crossed with the Tasmanian Devil, infused with the tiger blood of Charlie Sheen.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: There is no reason to see Martin Scorsese’s latest picture. It doesn’t even deserve a grade.
- Josh Spiegel @ Sound on Sight
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Though it goes on too long and crosses the finish line a little winded, [it’s] a mostly exciting ride on the Wall Street wild side–so long as you don’t expect a moral at the end beyond ‘don’t get caught.’
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Mel Valentin @ ScreenInvasion.com
- Excerpt: A controversial return to black comedic form for an American master.
- Andrew Wyatt @ Look / Listen (St. Louis Magazine)
- Excerpt: The Wolf of Wall Street is a sickening roller coaster, but one whose pitch-black absurdity renders it enjoyable for an especially dauntless breed of rider.
