{"id":1435,"date":"2014-02-03T00:49:35","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T00:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2014-02-03T00:49:35","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T00:49:35","slug":"oscars-2014-the-wolf-of-wall-street-and-american-hustle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/02\/03\/oscars-2014-the-wolf-of-wall-street-and-american-hustle\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscars 2014 \u2013 The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting double bill \u2013 both vaguely based on true life stories (<\/span>Wolf<\/i> much more so than <\/span>Hustle<\/i>), both doling out exposition via voice over from the leader character(s), both open to accusations of self-indulgence from their powerhouse directors, and both widely praised for the performances, especially of the leading men. They both even begin in the middle of the narrative before flashing back many years (handled in both cases rather better than in <\/span>12 Years<\/i>).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"1389723091_smotret-uoll-strit\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take Wolf<\/i> first. Scorsese returns to the well-spring of inspiration which has served him so well in the past. In outline, his new movie is a virtual retread of his amazing 1990 classic Goodfellas<\/i>, only in pin-striped shirts and braces. It even opens with DiCaprio all but saying \u201cAs far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a stockbroker.\u201d<\/p>\n

When his journey starts, DiCaprio is eager young stockbroker to be Jordan Belfort. Belfort is quickly taken under the wing of Matthew McConaughey\u2019s lanquid master of the universe who schools him in the art of keeping his clients\u2019 money moving from deal-to-deal while he pockets commission each and every time. Oh, and lots of masturbation, obviously. Belfort\u2019s plans are abruptly derailed by Black Monday but he lands on his feet pushing worthless penny stocks to suckers.<\/p>\n

Along the way he picks up eager young salesman Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill, virtually recreating his role in Money Ball<\/i> only with more and whiter teeth), and a motley gang of drop-outs and reprobates whom he in turn schools to extract even more sales from even richer marks until his firm of Stratton Oakmont has become a genuine, if thoroughly corrupt, Wall Street powerhouse, eventually attracting the attention of federal agent Kyle Chandler.<\/p>\n

Throw in Rob Reiner as Belfort\u2019s dad, newcomer Margot Robbie as his smoking hot second wife, Joanna Lumley (really!) as her English Aunt and Jean du Jardin as a crooked Swiss banker and you have a fizzy, heady concoction which held me absolutely riveted despite the fact that the tale of Jordan\u2019s life doesn\u2019t really have the kind of pivot point which most strong narratives require. Jordan simply is not able to learn the lessons that life tries to teach him, consistently failing to cash out when the opportunity is presented and hardly ever deviating from the course he sets in the film\u2019s opening sequences \u2013 line your own pockets, share with your friends, and live to preposterous excess.<\/p>\n

That at three hours the film never once seems boring, despite this lack of plotting, is largely testimony to how precisely Scorsese handles the material. Realising that bravura shot after bravura shot would become wearing, he wisely keeps his powder dry save for a handful of delirious sequences. More often than not \u2013 as in the lengthy but gripping sequence when DiCaprio and Chandler meet on Belfort\u2019s yacht and trade first pleasantries, then vague threats and finally profane insults \u2013 Scorsese is content to trust the script and the actors to carry the audience with them.<\/p>\n

And what actors! Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie and Rob Reiner in particular are all quite outstanding, carefully finding a tone which suits the extraordinary largesse of the movie. But striding magnificently across the whole enterprise is DiCaprio who is quite exceptional. I\u2019ve long wondered at the appeal of this charming but rather ordinary-seeming actor, and in particular I\u2019ve struggled to see what Scorsese sees in him. Now I get it. In scene after scene, he pours demented energy into his characterisation of Belfort, filling him up until it seems as if he might explode. His rat-a-tat voice-over in the film\u2019s opening is pure movie star. Later when he addresses the camera Francis Urqhuart-style, and then declines to bore and confuse the audience with the technical details of this latest fraud, he\u2019s electric. In the lengthy sequence when he and Hill are reduced to spastic incoherence on weapons-grade Quaaludes, he is absolutely astonishing. And in the terrifying yacht sequence, when in wild-eyed hysteria he bellows at Hill \u201cI\u2019m not going to die sober!\u201d he is frightening, pitiful, hilarious and sickening all in one.<\/p>\n

The Wolf of Wall Street<\/i> isn\u2019t an important film that needed to be made. The stakes are often relatively low \u2013 even though Belfort\u2019s actions may be destroying lives, neither he nor Scorsese are even slightly interested in that \u2013 but the world the movie takes place in is so bracingly absurd, so shockingly excessive, so confoundingly amoral that it\u2019s a hugely entertaining place to spend three hours.<\/p>\n

\"American-Hustle-pic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The grifters in American Hustle<\/i> have nothing like the ambition of Belfort and his crew, for whom bigger is better and diminishing returns never set in. Paunchy, middle-aged, dry cleaning operator and fraudulent loan salesman Irving Rosenfeld, played by Christian Bale with a comb-over of prodigious proportions, cautions again and again that for their own safety, they need to maintain an operation that isn\u2019t too big.<\/p>\n

His world is upset by the arrival of a new girlfriend, luminous Amy Adams, FBI agent on the make Bradley Cooper, and by the continued presence of his lunatic wife, Jennifer Lawrence, who is seemingly able to make any new household gadget catch on fire (especially her new Science Oven, i.e. microwave). Determined to make a name for himself, Cooper recruits Adams and Bale to run a sting operation involving the mayor of Camden New Jersey, a number of high-ranking politicians, Florida mob bosses (led by Robert De Niro) and a fake Arab Sheikh. Everyone involved is bedecked with ridiculous hair-dos, and most hide behind gigantic glasses, in a way which creates a weirdly consistent look, knitting together this disparate collection of clashing characters.<\/p>\n

Early on, director David O Russell is fully in command, swiftly and engagingly painting in back-stories for these compelling characters, nimbly allowing Bale and Adams to share voice-over duties as the need arises, and populating the rest of the world with delightful cameos \u2013 none more so than Louis CK as Cooper\u2019s stick-in-the-mud (or should that be fall-through-the-ice?) boss. But, as the plans of the various participants start to unravel, so too does the narrative focus of the movie. It\u2019s telling that, for me at least, the three hour movie actually felt lean, propulsive and sleek, while the 138 minute movie feels indulgent, sprawling and undisciplined, at least in the middle third. It\u2019s during this forty minute or so stretch that the movie can\u2019t seem to find a centre, wandering aimlessly from sub-plot to sub-plot \u2013 never less than interesting, but starting to feel like channel-hopping between four or five different, but oddly similar, movies.<\/p>\n

Everything picks up however, for a final act which delivers in style and stays perfectly true to the rich and rounded characters which Russell and his \u201crepertory company\u201d of actors have created. Amy Adams is wonderful as the mercurial Sydney whose loyalties shift as easily as her accent. Bradley Cooper uncovers layer after layer of sleaze under what we first take to be a pretty straight-arrow G-man. Jennifer Lawrence, in a role which sometimes seems like an afterthought, is a force of nature as Bale\u2019s emotionally crippled wife \u2013 but Bale is outstandingly good as Irving, adding a vivid and completely original new face to an already amazingly impressive rogues\u2019 gallery. There\u2019s a lightness of touch to his nervy conman which I haven\u2019t seen from him before. Sometimes when strong dramatic actors are given licence to be funny, the results are clunking and overblown, but Bale allows the absurdity of the situation to flow through the character and is content to let his hair be the most over-the-top aspect of the performance.<\/p>\n

Sadly for this fantastic quartet, although all are nominated, I don\u2019t think any of them are going to win come Oscar night \u2013 each is up against a juggernaut. Bale will lose out to Chiwetal Ejiofor, Amy Adams will have to watch Cate Blanchett win and Bradley Cooper will have to fake-smile as Jared Leto lifts the Oscar. Jennifer Lawrence has got a chance, but seeing as she won last year, I think that Lupita Nyong\u2019o will be the one smiling on 2 March.<\/p>\n

The Academy\u2019s eccentric rules about screenplays means that of the various movies inspired by true stories which are in contention,\u00a012 Years A Slave<\/i> is up for Best Adapted Screenplay, which means that Hustle<\/i> will almost certainly pick up Best Original Screenplay, which is a little disappointing, since the storytelling is probably where it\u2019s weakest, even if only in the middle.<\/p>\n

The last two movies on the list \u2013 Dallas Buyers Club<\/i> and Her<\/i> \u2013 are not released in the UK at the time of writing, so I may try and take in August Osage County<\/i> and Inside Llewyn Davis<\/i> to fill the gap. So far, though, this has been a strong year, the strongest I can remember since the Academy decided to nominate more than five films for Best Picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting double bill \u2013 both vaguely based on true life stories (Wolf much more so than Hustle), both doling out exposition via voice over from the leader character(s), both open to accusations of self-indulgence from their powerhouse directors, and both widely praised for the performances, especially of the leading men. They both even begin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[377,376,375,340,372,374,12,364,19,371,373],"class_list":["post-1435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-hustle","tag-amy-adams","tag-bradley-cooper","tag-david-o-russell","tag-dicaprio","tag-jennifer-lawrence","tag-movies","tag-oscars-2014","tag-reviews","tag-scorsese","tag-wolf-of-wall-street"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-n9","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1435"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}