The Wolf Of Wall Street (18)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

3 Stars

Given the chronic crisis of capitalism, it wouldn't surprise me if some neoliberal cranks will enjoy The Wolf Of Wall Street, which features a rogue stock trader with charisma.

Such Armani-suited sharks take pride in the practice of picking the bones of any capitalist carcass that couldn't survive the crash.

Such was the response of Jordan Belfort, the eponymous capitalist carnivore who has provided the story for Martin Scorsese's caustic satire.

It opens with Belfort boasting: "When I was 29 I made $49 million, which really pissed me off since it was three shy of a million a week."

The Black Monday crash in 1987 left Belfort broke, so he decided to join a penny-ante firm that claimed it encouraged working-class investors in small ventures.

It didn't take him long to train them in the patter and build an empire selling dopes hope before threatening the bigger boys by refusing to play by their rules.

He was a flim-flam man with the gift of the gab, appealing to basic instincts - "everyone is a winner"- since it's the ideological foundation of capitalism.

Scorsese's feature - essentially a three-hour harangue - is a combination of Wall Street, The Great Gatsby, Goodfellas and The Untouchables, with Leonardo DiCaprio in overdrive as the super-charged Belfort.

He's even profiled as a con man or a Robin Hood figure in an "exposé" which only serves to give him a higher profile since "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

But his selling of worthless shares and pocketing the profits starts to attract attention as the cash gets flashed.

Naturally, he trades in his working-class wife for a blonde bourgeois with English connections (Margot Robbie) who later turns out to be a liability as his excesses become ever more brutal.

There's the usual array of bacchanalian orgies, with top-shelf hookers Blue Chip, Pink Slip and Bottoms-up on offer. And the language throughout, peppered with the phraseology of the bull and bear market, is misogynistic, homophobic and downright misanthropic.

Then, like the revered Elliot Ness, we're introduced to honest FBI officer Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) who impresses his attention on Belfort with a sinister reminder.

"In 1983 the US invaded Grenada to free the 90,000 population from a revolution," he tells him. "From now on consider yourself a Grenadian."

The fact that the US has acted thus all over the world is often forgotten and it seems such an apt reference to a counter-revolution in a former British colony.

It's a monster of a film but, like a surfeit of sugary confectionery, it begins to make you gag and the decibel level alone is migraine-inducing. We all like an epic but sometime less is more - don't forget your earplugs.

Even so, Scorsese employs all his skills choreographing a cast of colourful characters who undergo the full slapstick routine before coming a cropper.

The tour de force is Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort, who goes from one extreme of addiction to the other as he preaches that "greed is good because it's the stuff of the American Dream."

Yet that doesn't stop him shopping his mates. That leads to some bloody consequences before he serves out his time and returns to the circuit as a self-help champion.

This is the tax-free philosophy that we're being sold by the Con Dems and all those who don't think that some social control would be beneficial.

The film poses many moral and political questions, not least why the current crop of capitalist crooks aren't being punished, including those in our own Cabinet.