The Wolf of Wall Street

Director Martin Scorsese and writer Terence Winter go careening through the life of stock-market huckster Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), from his small-time beginning through his drug-addled reign as an amoral master of the universe to his downfall at the hands of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI. The obvious model is Scorsese's masterpiece Goodfellas (1990), but it lacks the narrative drive—besides, stockbrokers don't have the same vicarious charge as gangsters, no matter how crooked they are. It's a movie of great bits and pieces—Jonah Hill as Belfort's slimy partner, DiCaprio's surprising flair for physical comedy—but the whole is less than the sum of its parts: The early energy dissipates almost completely over a seemingly endless three hours. This wolf huffs and puffs, but he doesn't blow the house down.