Quaaludes, sex, drugs and 569 variations of the F-word are just some of what is featured in the three-hour long movie, “The Wolf of Wall Street.” “The name of the game, moving the money from the client’s pocket to your pocket.” This line is said by Matthew McConaughey’s character Mark Hanna, which completely sets the tone for this movie.
This rated-R movie directed by Martin Scorsese starts out with Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, taking a job as a stockbroker at an established Wall Street firm. In his one cameo, McConaughey, who is his boss, shows Belfort how to have a lifestyle of casual sex and cocaine use to succeed in the industry.
After the infamous Black Monday that happened on October 19, 1987, an unemployed Belfort takes a job with a Long Island company that deals in penny stocks. From the get-go, his aggressiveness with the clients and the higher commission rate of penny stocks earns him a small fortune. In comes his friendship with Donnie Azoff, who is played by Jonah Hill, a salesman who lives in the same complex as Belfort. Soon enough these two create a firm that deals in a pump-and-dump scam—–meaning they falsely inflate the price of a stock through misleading positive statements in order to sell it at a higher price.
Once the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission gets involved and investigates their firm, the action gets intense. Much bribery and corruption is involved in all of the cover-ups, and now Belfort, who was once at the bottom of the totem pole in the industry, is one of the richest men in New York.
Rob Reiner, who plays Belfort’s father, tries to convince his son to step down from his firm and escape the large amount of legal penalties, but Belfort just can’t do it, which makes his life a roller coaster ride without safety bars.
Belfort uses his money to become powerful, takes enough drugs to hallucinate, and even takes women by storm. He has no problem showing us how to get to the American dream through corporate greed: all starting from penny stocks and ending in a life of corruption in his early twenties.
Filmed mostly in New York City, this movie has made $63 million dollars and is loosely adapted on Belfort’s two books, “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2008) and “Catching the Wolf of Wall Street” (2011).