Only diehard fans of Martin Scorsese will be howling in delight for “The Wolf of Wall Street,” says a source who saw the movie at its first screening Saturday in Los Angeles.
The two-hour, 59-minute running time is “painful,” my friend reports. The one bright spot? Jonah Hill is brilliant as the cocaine- and Quaalude-consuming sidekick of pump-and-dump mastermind Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), on whose memoir the movie is based.
“But it’s so repetitive, it easily could have been two hours,” said my source. DiCaprio as Belfort not only wrecks a Lamborghini, he also wrecks his yacht.
Scorsese struggled to get the movie’s rating from an NC-17 to an R, but there is still plenty of full frontal nudity of gorgeous hookers. “Wolf” is set to open on Christmas Day. Take the whole family.
“It’s ‘Scarface’ meets ‘The Boiler Room,’ but there are no sympathetic characters, and no redemption,” my critic said. Without giving anything away, Belfort ends up in a country-club prison, quite pleased with himself.