Movie: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Caution Spoiler Alert

 

The Wolf of Wall Street

Came out; 2013

Time; 3 hours

Watched: Paramount Plus

Rated: R for sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout and for some violence

IMDB Rating; 8.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes:

Tomato Meter 79%

Popcorn Meter 83%

Caution; Spoiler Alert

Staring;

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort

Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff

Margot Robbie as Naomi Lapaglia

Matthew McConaugh as Mark Hanna

Kyle Chandler as Agent Patrick Denham

Rob Reiner as Max Belfort

Jon Bernthal as Brad

Jon Favreau as Manny Riskin

Jean Dujardin as Jean Jacques Saurel

Joanna Lumley as Aunt Emma

Cristin Millioti as Teresa Petrillo

Story Line;

Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) is Long Island penny stockbroker who serves almost two years in prison for refusing to co-operate in a huge 1990s securities fraud case that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including mob infiltration.

Thoughts:

We didn't watch this movie way back when it came out. We were so busy between like 2007-2015 with kids that we missed a lot. We've decided to go backwards and watch movies we didn't see when they came out. We started with this one. It wasn't great

There are a ton of famous people in this, it's way too long and there's so much going on all the time that you sometimes forget what the actual story line is.

I understand this is about stock trading that's a “Pump & Dump” but I don't really understand what that means. What I do know, is this wouldn't be the life I'd want to get in and there were so many unanswered questions

CAUTION; Spoiler Alert

Jordan Belfort, at 25 years old, worked as a Wall Street stockbroker for L.F. Rothschild in 1987, working under Mark Hanna. The drug-fueled stockbroker atmosphere and Hanna's conviction that a broker's sole objective is to enrich himself swiftly draw him in. After Black Monday, the worst one-day stock market decline since the 1929 stock market crash, Jordan quits his job and accepts a position at Investor's Center, a Long Island boiler room brokerage business that specialized in pink sheet penny stocks. His aggressive pitching skills and large commissions earn him a tiny fortune.

Jordan and Donnie Azoff, his neighbor, become friends and launch their own boiler room brokerage firm. After training local drug dealer Brad Bonick in the technique of the "hard sell," they enlist Jordan's boyhood pals Robbie Feinberg, Alden Kupferburg, Nicky Koskoff, Chester Ming, and Toby Welch. They also establish the business in an abandoned auto repair shop. Jordan's pump and dump strategy, which inflates a stock's price by false, positive claims in order to sell it at an artificially high price, is generally successful due to his strategies and salesmanship. The price falls as the scheme's perpetrators sell their inflated securities, leaving those who were duped into purchasing them with stock that is abruptly worth a lot less than what they originally bought for it. In 1989, Jordan disguises this by renaming the company Stratton Oakmont, which sounds respectable. Jordan develops a sharper sales script for his team and they quickly gain a large client pool.

The business soon achieves great success and expands into a larger office after leaving the car repair shop. Hundreds of ambitious young financiers rush to the business after an expose in Forbes dubbed Jordan "The Wolf of Wall Street" -- "a sort of twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers"-and they relocate into even larger offices.

As all this is happening, Jordan becomes immensely successful and slides into a decadent lifestyle of prostitutes and drugs that spills over into his firm where having sex and doing drugs in the office is acceptable. He has an affair with lingerie designer Naomi Lapaglia, and when his wife Teresa finds out, Jordan divorces her and marries Naomi in 1991. Meanwhile, the SEC and the FBI begin investigating Stratton Oakmont.

In 1993, Jordan illegally made $22 million in three hours after securing the IPO of Donnie's childhood friend and women's shoe designer Steve Madden, bringing him and his firm further FBI attention. To hide his money, Jordan opens a Swiss bank account with corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma, who lives in London and thus remains outside the immediate reach of American authorities. He uses Brad's Swiss-Slovenian wife Chantalle and her family, who have European passports, to smuggle the cash into Switzerland.

Donnie and Brad soon get into a heated argument in public during a money exchange, resulting in Brad's arrest as Donnie escapes. Jordan learns from his private investigator, Bo Dietl, that the FBI is wiretapping his phones. Jordan himself is nearly arrested for driving his prized Lamborghini Countach home from a nearby country club while extremely intoxicated on Quaaludes but without proof he was behind the wheel of the wrecked car, the police have nothing on him. However, Donnie had been on the phone at Jordan's home arguing with Sorel in Switzerland, also while high, offering further evidence to the FBI.

Fearing for his son, Jordan's father Max advises him to leave Stratton Oakmont and lie low while Jordan's lawyer negotiates a deal to keep him out of prison. In the midst of his farewell speech, Jordan cannot bear to quit and talks himself into staying, to the immense support of his friends and employees.

In 1996, Jordan, Donnie, and their wives are on a yacht trip to Italy when they learn that Emma has died of a heart attack. Jordan, suddenly desperate to reach Switzerland to forge her name and save the account before going to London for the funeral, orders his yacht captain to sail to Monaco to bypass customs enforcement, but their ship capsizes in a storm. After their rescue, the plane sent to take them to Geneva is destroyed when a seagull flies into the engine; Jordan takes this as a sign from God to address his worsening drug addiction and attempts to sober up.

In 1998, Saurel and Koskoff are arrested for an unrelated crime, the former informing the FBI about Jordan as a plea bargain. Since the evidence against him is overwhelming, Jordan agrees to gather evidence from the rest of his colleagues in exchange for leniency. After having sex for the last time, Naomi tells Jordan that she is divorcing him and wants full custody of their daughter and infant son. In a cocaine-fueled rage, Jordan punches Naomi and tries to drive away with his daughter, but crashes his car in the driveway. His daughter is unharmed but Jordan seems to recognize he's reached rock bottom.

Later, Jordan wears a wire to work and slips a note to Donnie, warning his old partner not to incriminate himself. However, Donnie betrays Jordan by giving his note to the FBI, who arrest Jordan, before they raid and shut down Stratton Oakmont. Despite breaching his deal, Jordan receives a reduced sentence of 36 months in a minimum security prison for his testimony and is released in 2000 after serving 22 months. After his release, Jordan makes a living hosting seminars on sales techniques. At one in New Zealand, he starts by asking one of the attendees to sell him a pen he has on him. Jordan seems to revel in the failure of several of them to convince him.

Sources

IMBD

Rotten Tomatoes

Wikipedia