BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
If you’re a big movie fan then you should already know this movie is pretty damn popular, pretty damn successful, and pretty damn awesome. Little do most people know that this is “based on a true story” so to speak as it’s based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Belfort. He’s a guy who sells, sells, sells. He starts off as a low level grunt at a stock market firm. He becomes a certified broker but loses his job when Black Monday hits. He then ends up selling “penny stocks” at a small shitty firm that’s ignored by everyone, including the government regulators. He quickly find himself taking over the world. He, along with a cast of great characters, build up the small firm into a huge business where they basically scam people out of money and make high commissions for themselves in the process. Along the way he hooks up with a weird guy played by Jonah Hill and together they just have balls out fun as they cockily dominate the small scam business. They build and build as they all become millionaires. It eventually crashes, dude goes to jail and the sad reality of things sets in for everyone. People say it’s like Godfellas and it really is. It’s the same type of small timers rise to crazy success and excess and then face their reality at the end with some kind of lazy message tacked on. That’s what happens here. That’s nothing too surprising. It’s the content and way the story is told that’s great. When you hear “they go over the top” it’s often exaggerated. Here’s it’s under-exaggerated. The first time you see DiCaprio he’s blowing cocaine up a woman’s ass. They throw little people around, there is a fight while on Quaaludes that’s a sight to be seen, and the attitude and confidence of DiCaprio in this role is as powerful and strong as any action star, super hero or god-like figure. He owns the character and the character owns this world. If you have any ambition it’s hard NOT be inspired by this movie. But the lesson to take from it is to avoid the third act. If you look around and realize your second act is too good to be true then maybe you should pull back the reigns a little and try to milk it and enjoy it as long as possible because in the end you’ll freak out and be taken down. I know that’s NOT the intended moral of the story, but it’s the one I got from it. Martin Scorsese is on his A-game in this movie and it’s one of those situations when everything comes together perfectly. There is a reason this movie won all those awards and made all that money. It’s great! A
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