The Wolf of Wall Street is a 2013 American biographical film directed by Martin Scorsese. The screenplay by Terence Winter is adapted from the eponymous memoir by Jordan Belfort and recounts from Belfort's perspective his career as a stockbroker in New York City and how his firm Stratton Oakmont engaged in rampant corruption and fraud on Wall Street that ultimately led to his downfall. Leonardo DiCaprio (who also produced the film) stars as Belfort, with Jonah Hill as his business partner and friend Donnie Azoff, Margot Robbie as his second wife Naomi Lapaglia, and Kyle Chandler as Patrick Denham, the FBI agent who tries to bring him down. Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin, Joanna Lumley, and Matthew McConaughey are also featured. The film marks the director's fifth collaboration with DiCaprio, after Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), and Shutter Island (2010), as well as his second collaboration with Winter after the HBO television series Boardwalk Empire (2010â€"14).
The Wolf of Wall Street premiered in New York City on December 17, 2013, and was released theatrically on December 25, 2013, in the United States, distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was the first to have been released entirely through digital distribution. It was a major commercial success, grossing more than $392 million worldwide during its original theatrical run to become Scorsese's highest-grossing movie to date and the 17th-highest-grossing film of 2013. The film was controversial for its morally ambiguous depiction of events, explicit sexual content, profanity, depiction of hard drug use, and the use of animals during production. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and was nominated for several awards, including five nominations at the 86th Academy Awards ceremony, where: the film was nominated for Best Picture; Scorsese was nominated for Best Director; Winter was nominated for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay); and DiCaprio and Hill received Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor nominations respectively. The film did not win in any category; however, DiCaprio did win Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy at the 71st Golden Globe Awards, where the film was also nominated for Best Musical or Comedy Picture. It was also recognized by numerous other awards ceremonies, as well as guilds and critics' associations.
Plot
In 1987 after losing his job as a stockbroker at a Wall Street firm, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) takes a job at a boiler room brokerage firm that specializes in penny stocks. Thanks to his aggressive pitching style and the high commissions, Belfort makes a small fortune. He befriends a man named Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), and the two decide to found their own company. They recruit Belfort's accountant parents as well as several of Jordan's friends, whom Jordan trains in the art of the hard sell. The basic method of the firm is a pump and dump scam. To cloak this, Belfort gives the firm the respectable name of "Stratton Oakmont". After an exposé in Forbes, hundreds of ambitious young financiers flock to his company.
Jordan becomes immensely successful and slides into a decadent lifestyle of prostitutes and drugs. Jordan has an affair with a woman named Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie). He divorces his wife Teresa and marries Naomi, and soon they have a daughter, Skylar. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI begin investigating Stratton Oakmont.
Jordan illegally makes $22 million in three hours upon securing the IPO of Steve Madden, Ltd. To hide his illegitimate money, Jordan opens a Swiss bank account with corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel (Jean Dujardin) in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley), who is a British citizen and outside the reach of American authorities. He uses the family of his friend Brad Bodnick (Jon Bernthal), who have European passports, to smuggle cash to Switzerland.
Donnie gets into a public fight with Brad while arranging to smuggle his money, and Brad is arrested. Jordan also learns from his private investigator that the FBI is wiretapping his phones. Fearing for his son, Jordan's father pressures him to leave Stratton Oakmont and lay low while Jordan's lawyer orchestrates a deal to keep him out of prison. Jordan, however, cannot bear to quit.
Jordan, Donnie and their wives are on a yacht trip to Italy when they learn that Aunt Emma has died of a heart attack. Over the objections of his grieving wife and his yacht captain, Jordan decides to sail to Monaco so they can drive to Switzerland without getting their passports stamped at the border and settle the bank account, but a violent storm capsizes their yacht. After their rescue, the plane sent to take them to Geneva is destroyed by a seagull flying into the engine. Jordan considers this a sign from God and decides to sober up.
Two years later, the FBI arrests Jordan during the filming of an infomercial. Saurel, arrested in Florida over an unrelated charge, has told the FBI everything. Since the evidence against him is overwhelming, Jordan agrees to gather evidence on his colleagues in exchange for leniency.
Disgusted with Jordan's lifestyle, Naomi tells Jordan she will divorce him and wants full custody of their daughter and their unborn child. Jordan throws a tantrum, gets high, and ends up crashing his car in his driveway during an attempt to abscond with their daughter. Naomi takes her daughter off him and leaves him bleeding in the car.
The next morning, Jordan wears a wire to work as part of a plea bargain. Jordan silently slips Donnie a note warning him about the wire. The FBI discovers the note, and Jordan is arrested for breaching his cooperation deal. The FBI raids and shuts down Stratton Oakmont.
Despite this one breach, Jordan receives a reduced sentence for his testimony and is sentenced to 36 months in a minimum security prison in Nevada. After his release, Jordan makes a living hosting seminars on sales technique.
Cast
Production
Development
In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio/Warner Bros. won a bidding war against Brad Pitt/Paramount Pictures for the rights to Jordan Belfort's memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, and Martin Scorsese was considered to direct the film. During pre-production, Scorsese worked on the film's script prior to working on Shutter Island. He describes having "wasted five months of [his] life" without getting a green light on production dates by the studio Warner Bros. Jordan Belfort made $1 million on the movie rights.
In 2010, Warner Bros. had offered Ridley Scott to direct the film, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the male lead. However, Warner Bros. eventually dumped the project.
In 2012, a green light was given by the independent company Red Granite Pictures, allowing no restrictions to the content development. Scorsese, knowing there were no limits to the content he would produce, came back on board â€" resulting in a R rating. Red Granite Pictures also asked Paramount Pictures to distribute the film; Paramount Pictures agreed to distribute the film in North America and Japan, but passed on the rest of the international market.
In the film, most of the real-life characters' names originally in Belfort's memoir have been changed. Donnie Azoff is based on Danny Porush. The name was changed after Porush threatened to sue the filmmakers. The FBI agent known as Patrick Denham is the stand-in for real-life Gregory Coleman, and lawyer Manny Riskin is based on Ira Lee Sorkin. Belfort's first wife, Denise Lombardo, is renamed Teresa Petrillo, while second wife Nadine Caridi became Naomi Lapaglia on-screen. In contrast, Mark Hanna's name remains the same as the LF Rothschild stockbroker who, like Belfort, was convicted of fraud and served time in prison. The role of Aunt Emma was initially offered to Julie Andrews, who refused it as she was recovering from an ankle injury, and she was replaced by Joanna Lumley.
In January 2014, Jonah Hill revealed in an interview with Howard Stern that he made only $60,000 (the lowest possible SAG-AFTRA rate for his amount of work) on the film while his co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, who also produced, received $10 million. Hill was determined to work with Scorsese, and wanted to play Donnie Azoff so badly that he was willing to do whatever it took to get the part.
Filming
Filming began on August 8, 2012 in New York. Jonah Hill announced that his first day of shooting was September 4, 2012. Filming also took place in Closter, New Jersey and Harrison, New York. In January 2013, additional scenes were shot at a set built in an abandoned office building in Ardsley, New York. Scenes at the beach house were filmed in Sands Point, New York.
Scorsese's longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker stated that the film would be shot digitally instead of on film. Scorsese, who had been a proponent of shooting on film, decided to shoot Hugo digitally because it was being photographed in 3D; however, The Wolf of Wall Street was originally planned to be shot digitally despite being filmed in 2D. Schoonmaker expressed her disappointment with the decision, saying, "It would appear that we've lost the battle. I think Marty just feels it's unfortunately over, and there's been no bigger champion of film than him." After extensive comparison tests during pre-production, eventually the majority of the film was shot on film stock while scenes that used green screen effects or low light were shot with the digital Arri Alexa. The film contains 400â€"450 VFX shots.
Use of animals
The Wolf of Wall Street uses animals including a chimpanzee, a lion, a fish, and dogs. The chimpanzee and the lion were provided by the Big Cat Habitat wildlife sanctuary in Sarasota County, Florida. The four-year-old chimpanzee, Chance, spent time with actor Leonardo DiCaprio and learned to roller skate over the course of three weeks. The sanctuary also provided a lion named Handsome because the film's trading company used a lion for its symbol. Danny Porush, who was Jordan Belfort's partner, denied there being any animals in the office.
In December 2013, prior to the film's premiere, the organization Friends of Animals criticized the use of the chimpanzee and organized a boycott of the film. Variety reported, "Friends of Animals thinks the chimp ... suffered irreversible psychological damage after being forced to act." The Guardian said, "Criticism of The Wolf of Wall Street's use of a chimpanzee arrives as Hollywood comes under ever-increasing scrutiny for its employment of animals on screen," referring to a November 2013 report in The Hollywood Reporter that was critical of the American Humane Association's treatment of animals in films. PETA also launched a campaign to highlight mistreatment of ape "actors" and to petition for DiCaprio not to work with great apes.
Release
The Wolf of Wall Street premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on December 17, 2013, followed by a wide release on December 25, 2013. It was previously slated to be released on November 15, 2013, but the date was pushed back after film cuts were desired in order to reduce the run time. On October 22, 2013, it was reported that it was set for a Christmas 2013 release. Paramount officially confirmed the Christmas Day 2013 release date on October 29, 2013 with a running time of 165 minutes. On November 25, 2013, the length was announced to be 179 minutes. It was officially rated R for "sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout, and for some violence". Scorsese had to edit sexual content and nudity to avoid an NC-17 rating. By different counts, the film contains between 506 and 569 uses of the word "fuck", and currently holds the record for the most uses of the word in a mainstream non-documentary film.
The film is banned in Malaysia, Nepal, Zimbabwe, and Kenya because of its scenes depicting sex, drugs and excessive use of swear words, and additional scenes have been cut in the versions playing in India. In Singapore, the film has been relegated to only a handful of theaters because of its ultra-restrictive rating.
The film marks a change in film history when Paramount became the first major studio to distribute movies to theaters in digital format, eliminating 35mm film entirely. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues was the last Paramount production to include a 35mm film version, while The Wolf of Wall Street was the first major movie distributed entirely digitally.
Marketing
The film's first theatrical trailer was released on June 16, 2013 and features the song "Black Skinhead" by Kanye West. A new trailer was released on October 29, 2013. The songs featured in the second trailer are "Meth Lab Zoso Sticker" by 7Horse, "Blood Shot Eyes" by Black Strobe and "Hang You from the Heavens" by The Dead Weather.
Critical response
The Wolf of Wall Street received positive reviews, with many praising DiCaprio and Hill's performances, Scorsese's direction, and Winter's screenplay. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 77% approval rating, based on 246 reviews, with an average score of 7.7/10. The site's consensus states: "Funny, self-referential, and irreverent to a fault, The Wolf of Wall Street finds Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio at their most infectiously dynamic". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 75 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine named The Wolf of Wall Street as the third best film of 2013, behind 12 Years a Slave and Gravity at numbers one and two, respectively. The movie was chosen as one of the top ten films of the year by the American Film Institute. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said "it is the best and most enjoyable American film to be released this year." The Chicago Sun-Times's Richard Roeper gave the film a "B+" score, saying the film was "good, not great Scorsese".
Dana Stevens, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, wrote that the movie did not work for her after labeling the film "Epic in size, claustrophobically narrow in scope." According to Marshall Fine of The Huffington Post the story "wants us to be interested in characters who are dull people to start with, made duller by their delusions of being interesting because they are high." Some critics viewed the movie as an irresponsible glorification rather than a satirical takedown. DiCaprio responded that in his opinion the film does not glorify the excessive lifestyle it depicts.
Piracy
According to piracy tracking site Excipio, the film was the most pirated film of 2014 as it was downloaded illegally over 30 million times via torrent sites.
Top Ten Lists
Audience response
The film received a "C" rating from audiences surveyed by CinemaScore, a rating lower than anything else in theaters the opening week of the film. The Los Angeles Times argues that the film attracted conservative viewers by depicting a more moral tone in its marketing than the film itself depicted.
Christina McDowell, daughter of Tom Prousalis, who worked closely with the real-life Belfort at Stratton Oakmont, wrote an open letter addressing Scorsese, DiCaprio, and Belfort himself, criticizing the film for insufficiently portraying the victims of the financial crimes created by Stratton Oakmont, for disregarding the damage that was done to her family as a result, and for giving celebrity to persons (Belfort and his partners, including her father) who do not deserve it.
Steven Perlberg of Business Insider saw an advance screening of the film at a Regal Cinemas near the Goldman Sachs building, with an audience of financial workers. Perlberg reported cheers from the audience at all the wrong momentsâ€""When Belfort â€" a drug addict attempting to remain sober â€" rips up a couch cushion to get to his secret coke stash, there were cheers."
The former Assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted the real Belfort criticized both the movie and the book in which it is based. He said he believes some of Belfort's claims were "invented", as for instance "[Belfort] aggrandized his importance and reverence for him by others at his firm." He strongly criticizes the film for not depicting the "thousands of [scam] victims who lost hundreds of millions of dollars," not accepting the filmmakers argument in which that would detract attention from the wrongdoers. Furthermore, he deplores the endingâ€""beyond an insult" to his victimsâ€"in which the real Belfort appears, while showing "a large sign advertising the name of Mr. Belfort’s real motivational speaking company," and a positive depiction of Belfort uttering "variants of the same falsehoods he trained others to use against his victims."
Box office
The Wolf of Wall Street grossed $116.9 million in North America and $275.1 million internationally, for a worldwide gross of $392 million, making it Scorsese's highest grossing film. In North America, the film opened at number five in its first weekend, with $18.4 million in 3,387 theaters, behind The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Frozen, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, and American Hustle. In Australia, it is the highest grossing R-rated film, earning $12.96 million.
Accolades
The film was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese, Best Adapted Screenplay for Winter, Best Actor for DiCaprio, and Best Supporting Actor for Hill. It was also nominated for four BAFTAs, including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay, and two Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. DiCaprio won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor â€" Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Home media
The Wolf of Wall Street was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 25, 2014. On January 27, 2014, it was revealed that a four-hour director's cut would be attached to the home release. It was later revealed by Paramount Pictures and Red Granite Pictures that the home release would feature only the theatrical release.
Soundtrack
The Wolf of Wall Street: Music from the Motion Picture is a soundtrack to the film of the same name. The film features both original as well as existing music tracks, and was released on December 17, 2013 for digital download.
Over 60 songs were used in the film, but only 16 were included on the official soundtrack. Notably, amongst the exemptions are original compositions by Theodore Shapiro.
See also
- Boiler Room
- Gordon Gekko
- List of films that most frequently use the word "fuck"
- Microcap stock fraud
- Jordan Belfort
References
External links
- Official website
- The Wolf of Wall Street at the Internet Movie Database
- The Wolf of Wall Street at AllMovie
- The Wolf of Wall Street at Box Office Mojo
- The Wolf of Wall Street at Metacritic
- The Wolf of Wall Street at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Wolf of Wall Street filming locations at Movieloci.com