I enjoyed the movie but I also don't treat it like it's any kind of replication of reality. Like almost anything Hollywood puts out alongside the "based on actual events" clickbait.

The funding of the movie is also incredibly interesting, I think there was an episode of Netflix's Dirty Money based on that. Worth a watch.

(I upvoted original comment because it didn't deserve the very light grey text that it was)

I downvoted your comments because your comments trigger emotions, whereas good comments trigger curiosity. It sounds like you call everyone that liked that movie an idiot with no taste (I haven't seen the movie by the way). Now you even edited your second comment to say "Cowardly downvoters", which is a reason to flag it.

Thanks for the explanation; that's fair. I'm being polemic, probably too much so. My hatred for the movie is intense and it would be better communication if I could hide that.

I also downvoted, and it’s honestly because your point comes across as not understanding any of Martin Scorsese’s direction and body of work. Nearly all of his movies (primarily, mobster and crime related) are centered around characters and stories of wealth, excess, and the blatant flouting of rules and law in order to obtain power, followed by their near immediate downfall and loss of everything that truly matters. The Wolf of Wall Street, the movie, isn’t about the glorification of wealth: it’s about the vapidity and shallowness of that component of human nature and the ultimate self destruction and meaningless of life when it’s pursued. Someone can recommend that movie because they appreciate that moral and sentiment, not because they want to be a conman investment banker (or a gangster for that matter).

Maybe I should try some more Scorsese. Which movie do you recommend? I'll make an exception to my rule for the purpose of education :-)

If he was attempting to do what you describe with TWWS, I think he missed the mark. It seemed to express a a general nihilism rather than some message about how criminals ruin their own lives.

Things that would have made the movie better, in my eyes:

- At least one female character who was more than an object (Bechdel test was failed by a mile)

- Any scene with the perspective of any of the victims (the people whose lives Belfort destroyed are totally out of frame all movie)

- If Belfort's supposedly convincing / charismatic speeches were even slightly persuasive or entertaining (he did not sell me that pen at all)

- Less time wasted with blurry camera stumbling around on drugs

The funny thing is that I loved Catch Me if You Can when I first saw it and went to see TWWS hoping for more of that. So... maybe TWWS was more real. Crime does pay, and financial criminals are not geniuses, just bog-standard douchebags, and they get a slap on the wrist when they're caught and the world keeps spinning. Perhaps THAT is the message.

I'll also say that I didn't mean to imply they were idiots with no taste -- I meant that they are people whose cinema tastes are very different from mine. It's a shortcut for finding that out.