The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street

Leonardo DiCaprio has a ball as a sleazy stockbroker in Scorsese’s latest

Camilla Long Published: 19 January 2014

Off the leash: DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort (Universal)

The last film I’d expect Martin Scorsese to try to re-create is the filthy frat-boy classic American Pie. Yet here is America’s best director with The Wolf of Wall Street, a tale of how someone can go from being a nice, quiet Jewish boy to a venal and lubricious sex freak in the space of a few short scenes.

The story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is pure trash, published as an airport paperback a few years ago, offered up now as a subject for high art — only Belfort, once the “wildest” broker on Wall Street, is irredeemably vulgar and empty. He pounds phones by day and hookers by night, then flies home, high, in his helicopter, where his beautiful blonde wife (Margot Robbie) is having a panic attack on $50,000 silk sheets.

DiCaprio was the one who found the book — God knows where, perhaps, as Tina Fey joked at