Movie reviews: The Wolf of Wall Street

The bluesy stomp of Howlin’ Wolf ’s Smokestack Lightnin’ pops up regularly throughout The Wolf of Wall Street (18s), reminding us that Wall Street traders Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) are unlikely to enjoy a happy-ever-after. Based on the warts-’n’-all memoir of stockbroker Belfort, it’s a classic ragsto-riches tale, but the ‘heroes’ are unabashedly brutal and shallow, and naked in their ambition to make as much money as they can, and to spend it as flamboyantly as the 1980s culture of ‘greed is good’ demands.

Directed by Martin Scorsese, the movie owes such a significant debt to Scorsese’s own Goodfellas (1990) that it feels like a remake: an irrepressible DiCaprio implicates the audience as he speaks to camera about the joys of crime and vice, of stealing from the stupid and greedy rich, and about the decade-long orgy of Bacchanalian sexand-drugs excess funded by the traders’ illicit activities.

The freewheeling visuals and storytelling are intoxicating and testosterone permeates every frame, but this is a cautionary tale, and the lurid misogyny and animalistic behaviour are timely reminders of a persistent frat-house mentality. There are clunky moments, such as Belfort’s statement that his business model involves going after ‘the Moby-Dicks, the great white whales’ of finance, which suggests that Scorsese has in mind the celluloid equivalent of the great American novel. Given all we’ve learned about the casino mentality of high finance, The Wolf of Wall Street is an appositely chaotic, riotous exposé of the dark impulse that festers in the heart of the American Dream.

Devil’s Due (15A) opens with happy young couple, Zach (Zach Gilford) and Sam (Alison Miller), marrying and flying down to Santa Domingo for their honeymoon. They are unable to remember a trip to a subterranean nightclub on their last night, and soon after they return home Sam discovers she is pregnant.

Zach and Sam are delighted, but the audience is aware, courtesy of Zach’s always-on camcorder, that the couple have been abducted by a quasi-religious sect during their honeymoon, and soon Sam’s pregnancy is disturbed by traumatic events.

Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the movie plays out like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) remade for the Paranormal Activity generation, as most of the story comes to us via camcorder, CCTV, or footage from cameras installed in Zach’s and Sam’s home without their knowledge. It’s a solidly effective horror, but the director’s use of camera perspectives from outside of the ‘found footage’ parameters they established early on jars at crucial moments. Gilford and Miller make for a likeable leading pair, their chemistry strong enough to survive what seems extensive ad-libbing for the camcorder, but their good work is undermined by the unintentionally creepy, cod-Freudian repulsion at the inner workings of a pregnant woman’s body.

Rightly regarded as a classic today, The Night of the Hunter (1955) was so savaged by the critics on its release that Charles Laughton, a wonderful character actor making his directorial debut, never directed another film. Robert Mitchum is masterful as the chillingly charismatic Reverend Harry Powell, who marries the widow (Shelley Winters) of a former cell-mate, in the belief that she knows where the dead man has stashed his loot, and then pursues her two young children across a desolate, Depression-era landscape as they escape from his lethal clutches (the ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tattooed on Powell’s knuckles are iconic). Mitchum is disturbingly brilliant as the sleepy-eyed killer who preaches God and practices a soulless immorality, while silent-movie star Lillian Gish co-stars as a flesh-and-blood guardian angel, the yin to Powell’s yang, in a haunting tale (adapted by James Agee from Davis Grubb’s novel) that is a blend of crime, horror and dark fairytale. Stunningly shot by cinematographer Stanley Cortez, the film is a masterpiece of Southern Gothic surrealism. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see it on the big screen; the children’s night-time escape by rowboat from a raging Powell is worth the price of admission alone (IFI only).