Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street

 The Wolf of Wall Street is a study in excess, told in a masterful fashion, and a damn funny one at that, which continues to be misinterpreted, and that's a shame. I started my "Best of 2013" with American Hustle, a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed while I was watching it as both a movie about con artists but also as David O. Russell's homage to Casino and Goodfellas. And then I saw The Wolf of Wall Street, and remembered what a Martin Scorsese movie looks like when Martin Scorsese is directing, and not somebody doing a very good imitation.

 The difference is night and day: American Hustle strains under the weight of trying to be like the master, where Scorsese makes it seem effortless. There are dozens of examples I could use, but let's take one from the very beginning of the film, where Jordan Belfort (Leonard DiCaprio)'s Lamborghini is tearing through traffic, and has Belfort is telling us about how rich he is, he quickly points out that the car was white and not red, and as it switches lanes, bam!, color change. Scorsese transitions the color on motion, timed perfectly with the narration, and continues as though nothing happened.

 For those who aren't caught up on the story (or surrounding controversy that's going to rule the film out of any serious Oscar contention), The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, a stock broker turned penny stock dealer who scammed people out of their hard earned wages and lived a life of excess, beyond even the standards you'd think. He flaunted his illegality, fought the FBI and lost, and then turned on all of his friends to avoid serious jail time. Now he does motivational speaking engagements, and also wrote the book this film is based on. The real Jordan Belfort has a cameo in the film, introducing DiCaprio as Belfort near the end.

 Scorsese takes a very Goodfellas-esque approach here, throwing every trick in but the kitchen sink, and does it so well that you take it at face value. Jordan's narration will periodically shift to DiCaprio breaking the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly, making us accomplices in his schemes. The camera is constantly moving, swooping in and out of the madness at Stratton Oakmont, as Belfort's team of hand picked con artists move garbage stock and pocket the fees for themselves. Chief among them is Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), who quit his job immediately when Jordan provided a pay stub for 76 thousand dollars. Azoff introduces Jordan to crack and finds him some quality Quaaludes (Lemmon 714), but gets grief for being married to his cousin. His first cousin (the scene where he rationalizes it is uncomfortably hilarious, particularly because of DiCaprio's reaction).

 While this is undoubtedly Leonardo DiCaprio's show, the film is packed with well known actors in smaller roles that make a big impression. Continuing his streak of great appearances since 2012, Matthew McConaughey sweeps in at the beginning of the film, makes a big splash in a few scenes as Mark Hanna, the broker who hires Belfort and turns him from an idealist into a shark, and then disappears. There's a good reason his scene with DiCaprio in a restaurant has been compared to Alec Baldwin's scene in Glengarry Glenn Ross, because he makes that kind of impression and sets the stage for the film to come. Spike Jonze (her) has a similarly tiny role as Dwayne, the man who introduces Jordan to penny stocks, and Jon Favreau appears as Belfort's legal counsel. Rob Reiner is very funny as Jordan's father and has a few great scenes with Jonah Hill. Jon Bernthal, once of The Walking Dead, makes a good impression as one of Jordan's dealers, and Shea Whigham has a small but hilarious part as Belfort's boat captain.

 Jean Dujardin (The Artist) is a Swiss banker who agrees to hide Jordan's money in a scene where they communicate without speaking to one another. Absolutely Fabulous' Joanna Lumley is the aunt of Jordan's wife, Naomi (Margot Robbie), and private investigator Bo Dietl appears as himself, offering Jordan advice with FBI Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler). And that's just scratching the surface - there's a cameo from Fran Liebowitz, who Scorsese recently made a documentary about, and I'm sure I missed a few others along the way. Almost everybody is playing broad, but the ostentatious style of the source material merits it - this is a life where people have so much money they don't know how to spend it.

 I suppose you could say that, ironically, The Wolf of Wall Street is excessive in every way except its length, which might sound surprising considering that it's a few seconds shy of three hours. It never feels like three hours, although you're probably going to be a little overwhelmed by the rampant profanity, drug use, and gratuitous nudity, even considering who directed the film. From naked marching bands to the differences in prostitute quality to a scene involving Quaaludes that rivals the best physical comedy you can think of, The Wolf of Wall Street pushes Belfort's indulgences well beyond what a normal person would consider "reasonable" or even "excessive." When a movie opens with tossing a "little person" and a conversation where he's referred to as "it," you know for certain: Hugo this ain't.

  It's a glimpse into a world you'll never live in, and while it was cool to visit, I wouldn't want to stay there, and that certainly seems to be the point. And that's why I reject the consistent argument that The Wolf of Wall Street glorifies Jordan Belfort's behavior or makes it out to be something that up and coming brokers would want to emulate. Only an idiot looking to ruin their life very quickly would try to do anything that happens in this film. I don't suspect anybody is going to emulate Belfort's idiotic attempt to bribe Agent Denham, get called out on it, and then decide to kick the Feds off of his yacht, and if they do, they're not going to get sweetheart deals like he did.

 Don't misunderstand me: I'm not excusing what the actual Jordan Belfort did, but The Wolf of Wall Street doesn't glorify him in any way. Scorsese lets you see the world of the super rich, of the scum that floats to the top and lives a lifestyle that might be cool for a day or two (nice boats, lots of money and drugs, lots of sex and acting life a buffoon) but sticks around long enough to show you that you really wouldn't want to keep going. Even the Quaaludes scene, which proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Leonardo DiCaprio can handle physical comedy in a way nobody ever considered, has a sobering dark side when Scorsese cuts away to Belfort's young daughter watching her father. This is not a lifestyle that's admirable or worth emulating - it's fun to watch, and make no mistake that The Wolf of Wall Street is first and foremost a comedy, but it's unsustainable, even in the narrative of the picture.

 I'm also a little confused about the reaction to this because people are behaving as though this isn't something Martin Scorsese does regularly. Many of his most well renowned pictures are centered around seriously flawed protagonists, and most of the very best ones are based on real people who were still alive when he made them. Henry Hill no doubt benefited from Goodfellas, and Jake LaMotta didn't exactly hurt from Raging Bull. "Ace" Rothstein was based on Frank Rosenthal, who was still alive when Casino was released. Were they any more "glorified" than Jordan Belfort in their respective films? Or are they also presented as characters with serious issues, people who we relate to but wouldn't want to be in any more than a "wish fulfillment" capacity? I don't want to be Jordan Belfort any more than I would want to be Henry Hill, but I enjoyed seeing their stories told by a great filmmaker. If I want to object to the glorification of horrible people, I would again point you in the direction of Pain & Gain, a movie that simultaneously laughs at and glorifies (by casting Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie, and Dwayne Johnson) kidnappers and murderers.

 In the end, it all boils down to whether The Wolf of Wall Street is a movie worth watching, and it's an easy "yes." It's funny, fast paced, excessive (does Jonah Hill play Donnie Azoff too broadly? I don't know, maybe?) but it never feels long. There's a playfulness in Scorsese's direction that keeps things moving, and DiCaprio hasn't been this good in a long time. I didn't see The Great Gatsby but I'll go out on a limb and say that this is the better "rich asshole" picture of 2013. Even with Shutter Island in consideration, The Wolf of Wall Street is far and away their best collaboration, and I think that once the controversy dies down people might be more comfortable with the film as a part of the larger body of Scorsese's work. There's something to be said for a great American filmmaker working at the top of his game, making movies well into his 70s that are as good as anything out there. No offense to David O. Russell, because I did like American Hustle a lot when I saw it - it's just that you picked the wrong year to tug on Superman's cape.

"I" is for I Come in Peace

 Most people (the Cap'n included) mostly remember I Come in Peace from the trailer, which was seemingly attached to every movie and videotape I ever watched from 1990-1993.  When I mentioned it to friends who were coming over to watch it, almost all of them responded to the title by saying "you go in pieces." One of them hadn't even seen the movie, but that's how ubiquitous the trailer is in the 90s action zeitgeist. I'm pretty sure I had seen I Come in Peace at some point during high school, but I didn't remember much of it, and certainly not as well as I did Universal Soldier, the movie Dolph Lundgren made two years later*.

 In the rest of the world the movie is called Dark Angel, but I've only ever known it as I Come in Peace which is a much better title, if you ask me. Since I'm writing this we can safely assume you're not going to get a dissenting opinion in the body of the review, so I Come in Peace it is.

 For reasons that aren't very clear, I Come in Peace is set during Christmas, which gives me one more movie to show during DecemberFest. There's some rich jerk driving around with a cd player in his car (that's how you know he's rich, because this is 1989-1990 depending on when they filmed it) but some disturbance causes him to crash at a Christmas tree dealership. Fortunately for the guy, the disturbance is not Detective Riggs; unfortunately for him it is Matthias Hues (Talons of the Eagle), a giant blonde alien with glaucoma who can only say 'I Come in Peace," which he demonstrates by killing the dude with a wrist gun that shoots killer cds.

 Meanwhile, some crooks have infiltrated the police station and are stealing heroin from the evidence locker, but since they kill a cop played by the poor man's Steve Guttenberg and steal his name tag, it raises suspicions. The good news for them is at one of them is crazy enough to leave a bag explosives so powerful that it presumably kills everybody in the precinct station. They take the heroin and head off to the rendezvous point, a club called Jockos.

Meanwhile meanwhile,  Dolph Lundgren plays Detective Jack Caine, who is doing some surveillance outside of Jockos for the Houston police department when his partner is killed during a sting operation. He probably could have helped him, but Caine had to get out of his car to thwart a robbery across the street at a convenience store. Therefore his partner is murdered and then most of the bad guys are killed. It would be safe to guess that his superiors wouldn't be happy about this - they aren't - but I had also foolishly assumed his superiors were killed with every other cop in the station when the bomb went off. For some reason that never comes up during the investigation or during the film at all.

 Well, the other thing that Caine missed was that the bad guys are massacred by our boy Matthias (IMDB has his character name listed as "Talec" but I never heard that) and his flying cd weapon, but only so he could steal their heroin. In what sounds like the least cost-efficient plan I can think of, Matthias came all the way to Earth to pump people full of heroin, thus boosting their endorphins so that he could extract it for an alien drug. It takes him two briefcases full of heroin to collect five vials of endorphins, so I'm really not sure he's the brightest drug dealer in the universe. Also he's being chased by Jay Bilas (Sportscenter) who is a bounty hunter / space cop or something. He shaves a bald sport into his forehead so he kind of looks like he has a skullet, which doesn't help him blend in with normal Earthlings.

 Both aliens have a gun that causes things to explode (in any of their five available settings), which you think would draw attention, but in Houston nobody looks twice when you pull out a gun in a strip club or walk out of your apartment complex holding a shotgun. That, and literally everything explodes in this movie when it's shot, no matter what gun you're using.

 Lundgren must have been working really hard with a diction coach for I Come in Peace, because this is the most lucid I've ever heard his speaking voice in any Dolph movie I can think of. It's not that it's normally hard to understand him, but for some reason in this movie it's very easy to make out exactly what he's saying and his drawl seems to be at a minimum. Still, he's not dubbed - it's definitely Dolph talking - but I was taken aback a bit.

 I really like that none of the characters know this is a movie about aliens until halfway in. The audience knows, because director Craig R. Baxley (Stone Cold) keeps cutting away to Matthias so we can see how he extracts the drug (it involves injection tubes) from random victims, but neither the good guys nor the bad guys have any idea they aren't in a procedural crime movie. Det. Caine gets the third degree from his Sergeant and the FBI show up and force him to work with Special Agent Larry Smith (Dream On's Brian Benben) in tracking down the killer, and while they do find one of the spinning discs of death, nobody assumes "alien drug dealer" as primary suspect.

 So they make the rounds and talk to informants and sleazeballs like this guy Boner (character actor du jour Michael J. Pollard) and the crime lord who set up Caine's partner (played by the poor man's Robert Townsend) which leads them to a secondary drug deal with the henchman from Die Hard (Al Leong) and finally Caine meets the aliens. Suddenly he realizes what kind of movie he's in, which is good because while the cop movie we've been watching was also pretty good, it's WAY better when there's an alien drug dealer running around stabbing people and stealing brain chemicals.

 You may have noticed that I used the phrase "the poor man's" a bit in this review, and that's because I Come in Peace has two things that are almost as important as the main plot. One of them is the fact that this movie is littered with "that guy"s or actors who look like the more affordable version of other actors. There's a guy who looks like the weasel-y dude from Commando who Arnold promises to kill last (he lied) but is definitely not David Patrick Kelly. There's a cop who looks like he could have been Jonah Hill's dad, a guy who kind of looks like Carl Weathers, an so on. It becomes a fun game you can play while watching the movie, and between periods of "that guy!" you get to play the other game: spot the extra.

 I seriously want to give kudos to the person (or people) in charge of background casting for I Come in Peace, because they selected some of the finest extras you could hope for in a movie. Whether it's top notch moustaches, eye-catching costumes, or people finding absurd "business" to do on camera, I Come in Peace has a great selection of "what is that person doing?" going on in nearly every scene. There's even a misdirect outside of the other, non-destroyed police station where you think an extra dressed as a cop is waving to the camera, only to pan over and see he's just waving to a cop walking up to him.

 Now you may think that the fact I was fixated on background actors in some way means I didn't like I Come in Peace's main story, but that's where you are mistaken. For a movie that's roughly the poor man's Predator 2, I Come in Peace is a lot of fun with just the right balance of action movie cheese. I still don't get why you'd call this movie Dark Angel when I Come in Peace is a much more appropriate title (who would the "Dark Angel" be, anyway?) but that's a minor quibble. If the damn thing weren't so hard to find in the U.S., I'd recommend you all go watch it. Because you'll have a rollicking good time no matter where you focus your attention.




* If you were curious, he made The Punisher immediately before I Come in Peace, and there's a good reason I don't remember that one as well.