When dealing with a controversial figure in a biopic, screenwriters and directors will attempt to hone in on the positive traits, characteristics, emotions, and feelings that make them relatable — that make them human. These films attempt to highlight redeeming features that separate a flawed protagonist from a wholly remorseless antagonist.

Unfortunately, The Wolf of Wall Street, for all its glamour, style, and in-your-face brashness, has a detestable character at its very fore. One that is simply impossible to like. For a decade, The Wolf of Wall Street has been howling at the door of critical acclaim, widely liked by critics and cinephiles alike. However, to paraphrase the film itself, the real question is this: was all this hype warranted? Absolutely f**king not.

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Jordan Belfort: Antagonist Turned Protagonist

     Paramount Pictures

Yes, Leonardo DiCaprio is electric as Jordan Belfort. His performance as the drug-rattling stockbroker was Oscar-worthy, arguably more notable than his display as the disheveled Hugh Glass in The Revenant, the role for which he eventually won that first, elusive Academy Award. DiCaprio is such a commanding screen presence, a master of acting. His display is dominating, domineering, pretentious, obnoxious, tasteless, and downright unlikeable. In that, though, lies the issue. Biographically-inspired pictures can prove to be problematic when even a dramatization of the subject’s life can’t resuscitate their reputation. Belfort is both the protagonist and antagonist in his own movie.

What director Martin Scorsese does remarkably well is to create this sense of detachment between the audience, character, and crime. For the most part, Belfort’s criminal escapades almost appear to be victimless, masked by this insatiable appetite to get rich and make lots of freakin’ money. Many a viewer was blinded by that idolized lifestyle of fast cars, mega-yachts, playboy-orgies, and shelling out $26,000 on sides. The cocaine x Quaalude collaboration. It explains why job applications at broker firms skyrocketed after the film’s release.

Why The Wolf of Wall Street Should Be More Controversial

Yet, if people were to delve slightly deeper into the titular character’s devious endeavors, they’d perhaps understand the self-proclaimed “Wolf of Wall Street” was flagrantly violating the law, and feasting on the economic carcass of the common man. The Vulture of Wall Street is a more befitting title… from debauchery and serial infidelity, to ripping off often innocent, hard-working men with little room for financial maneuvers when the bogus stocks they’ve been sold inevitably capitulate.

The “pump and dump” schemes his businesses would operate on were just as fraudulent, Belfort and his colleagues lived off the proletariat’s desire to achieve the American Dream and become “self-made.” It was a business model built on deceptive capitalist exploitation, and people like Belfort were the ones responsible for so many families losing their homes, people taking their own lives, and small businesses shutting down.

Does The Wolf of Wall Street Ever Truly Climax?

Admittedly, the only thing that seems to climax in this caffeinated three-hour yarn is Belfort himself, who achieves one after a fleeting, five-second sexual encounter with Margot Robbie’s Naomi. Other than getting progressively richer, it’s difficult to identify a specific point in Scorsese’s adaptation where we really reach a climax.

The movie sets the narrative foundations of a junior stockbroker trying to make his way on Wall Street relatively well, yet as soon as he reaches his destination of the outrageous affluence of Stratton Oakmont, the film seems to plateau, as one act of self-indulgent decadence follows another. The film becomes more than two hours of just awful people having fun at the expense of suffering lower-classes.

The Morals of the Story Are Misinterpreted by the Audience

In a world where presidents cheat on their wives with porn stars before publicly announcing they plan to “ban Muslims” and “build a wall," and Prime Ministers flout their own lockdown rules to host parties, societal morality is clearly in trouble. While Scorsese does his best to expose the abhorrent lawlessness of Belfort and his cronies, and their blatant chauvinism and misogyny, it is achieved in a manner that only encourages and validates their type of behavior. Enjoying The Wolf of Wall Street is like watching Back to the Future II and rooting for Biff.

The film is more concerned with what their fraudulent activities facilitated — the excessive opulence, the trophy wives, and their depraved appetites for sex, drugs, and corruption. The idea that their exploits were crass, morally bankrupt, and reprehensible was completely bypassed by many viewers, and instead, it was met with commendation. Instead of condemning their actions, audiences celebrated them.

Belfort was popularized; he became a source of inspiration, and the lifestyle he led was idealized regardless of the means employed to acquire it. The Wolf of Wall Street is a mélange of conflicting messages, but one thing is for sure — the immorality depicted is adulated because it is executed with a laugh, a wink, an unbridled amount of cash, and a faceless victim.

The Saving Graces

For all of its ethical bankruptcy, The Wolf of Wall Street is rich in impeccably made filmmaking. From cinematographer Rodrigo Prietor’s hybrid lens, which switches between 35mm and digital, and the slick, voguish editing of previous Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, who brings such energy to the film, to Bob Shaw’s irresistible set design, we can say with utter certainty that this dark comedy has many indelible qualities.

It’s in DiCaprio and Jonah Hill that the film finds its best performances. Hill brings his impeccable comedic timing to the role of the leach that is Belfort’s right-hand-man, Donnie Azoff; in a number of ways he’s actually more unpalatable, and grotesque than his counterpart, Belfort. DiCaprio is sensational as the wolf (or vulture), and his display alone keeps the film’s repugnant undertones from tarnishing the entire flick. But again, that’s part of the problem — DiCaprio is just too good here, and instead of despising him as we should, we like him.