In the spirit of better late than never, here are some thoughts on Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Generally accepted as one of America’s greatest directors, it’s worth taking in any Scorsese movie just to see what he’s up to. After viewing this movie, though, I found myself asking, what was he thinking?

To start with, what was the point? Why make the movie in the first place? One is tempted to guess that Scorsese, too, succumbed to the sales charm of Jordan Belfort, the former Wall Street stockbroker whose rise and fall is the subject of the movie. It would only be fitting. Given the movie’s commercial success (at the time of writing, over $110M), it may prove to be yet another Belfort windfall.

After all, is anyone surprised at the portrayal of stockbrokers as greedy, decadent, overgrown adolescents? This is hardly new territory. Then add to it’s pointlessness the punishing length of this movie. At three hours long, they could easily have had cut an hour’s worth of material. How many scenes did they really need to demonstrate the greedy, decadent and adolescent behaviour of the brokers? By the time the credits roll up, the movie has succeeded only in making nudity, sex and drugs utterly boring. This is perhaps its greatest sin.

Are there any positives? Well, yes. There is some very fine acting, and Leonard DiCaprio displays some brilliant physical comedy. Is it worth suffering through the whole movie for this? Not really.

Every great artist is entitled to a miss or two. This one is definitely a miss. Let’s hope Scorsese hits it out of the park next time.