Though it does not measure up to GoodFellas (1990) or Casino (1995), the two previous Scorsese masterworks with which it shares thematic similarities, The Wolf of Wall Street still makes for compelling viewing.

If you’re appalled by the vacuousness and superficiality of Belfort’s world, then perhaps you’re seeing the ambiguities that one would expect of a Scorcese film. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to figure out whether we’re imagining them or if they’re actually there.

It’s a zeitgeist film, of course, given all that has happened on Wall Street and the rest of the world in recent times, but it’s also a study of addiction, to money, drugs, sex and the kind of outré hedonism that now seems outright obscene. The movie doesn’t have a single totemic image that captures the obscene wealth and privilege on display—there is no Antilla, no Scarface cocaine bath. Rather, the parade of outrageousness continues from the beginning to the end, dominated by DiCaprio’s smarmy visage that suggests a Gatsby gone irredeemably rogue and transformed into a coked-out raging bull.