The Wolf of Wall Street 4K UHD

Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Terrance Winter
Starring: ‎ Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, John Bernthal, Kyle Chandler 
Year: 2013
Duration: 180 mins
BBFC Certification: 18

A recent opinion piece on Martin Scorsese for The Critic set Twitter on fire last month. In an inflammatory assessment of the legendary director (a choice quote, for example, was that Scorsese didn’t believe in cinema. I’ll just let you digest that one…) that seemed more intent on creating a social media storm than anything else, one dubious claim among dozens was that The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese’s 2013 biopic of Wall Street wunderkind Jordan Belfort, was achingly slow. I don’t know why that line stood out as a slap in the face among so many other spurious assessments; I had always seen The Wolf of Wall Street as one of Scorsese’s late career crowning achievements, with a pace that grips you by the throat and then never lets go. Yet perhaps I should have expected nothing less from an article that found profundity in Captain America Civil War yet described Raging Bull as bad filmmaking (I promise you I’m not making this up).

Anyway, enough of that. Back in the land of the sane and rational, I’m clearly not the only one who sees The Wolf of Wall Street as one of the jewels in Scorsese’s canon (and boy, are there a lot to choose from). This month, Arrow are releasing a new 4K limited edition of this rollercoaster ride charting the highs and lows of Wall Street greed and excess. Yet how does this edition stack up against the previous Blu Ray?

For anyone unfamiliar with The Wolf of Wall Street, the film follows the meteoric rise (and subsequent fall) of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) a young New York stockbroker who, through his company Stratton Oakmont, raked in millions and millions of dollars through a variety of dodgy and illegal stock deals. Based on real events (with screenwriter Terrance Winter using the biography of the same title, written by the real Belfort, as the basis for his script) the narrative is as shocking as it is hilarious.

Bringing this outrageous tale to the big screen finds Scorsese firing on all cylinders. While the surface subject matter of Wall Street and high finance may feel like unfamiliar territory for the director, for anyone familiar with his work, it swiftly becomes apparent that The Wolf of Wall Street is a spiritual successor to Goodfellas, with Scorsese mirroring not only that film’s overarching themes but also recapturing the exuberant filmmaking techniques that cemented it as a peerless technical masterclass. From the wry voice over to the dark humour, from the explosive filmmaking to the propulsive plot, and, most vitally of all, in the narrative arc of a young man being seduced into an amoral world where he’ll eventually loose his soul, it comes as little surprise that The Wolf of Wall Street is now seen as a version of Goodfellas where bankers have replaced gangsters.

Be rest assured, however, that The Wolf of Wall Street doesn’t find Scorsese lazily resting on past laurels. Instead, it found him delivering one of his most energised and explosive films in decades – as well as the most hilarious movie in his entire canon. While humour has often  lurked with an amoral wink amid the darkness of Scorsese’s narratives, or even overtly, as in the little seen After Hours, The Wolf of Wall Street takes the subversive humour that has frequently been present in the director’s work and places in front and centre. Helped in no little part by a free and improvisational atmosphere on set, coupled with the casting of comedic actors such as Jonah Hill, the film encourages us to both laugh and wince at the often terrible antics taking place on screen. The film’s most infamous scene, where Belfort and his business partner Donnie (Hill) overdose on quaaludes, even finds Scorsese moving into slapstick territory, with phenomenal results.

The joy and hilarity of watching The Wolf of Wall Street does not rest solely on Scorsese’s shoulders however. He is ably helped along by a magnificent cast where there is not one weak link in the entire chain. DiCaprio, at his most darkly charismatic and charming, is simply remarkable, while Jonah Hill’s neurotic and unbalanced turn as Donnie rightly earned him an Oscar nod. Margot Robbie makes a blistering impact in her big screen debut as Belfort’s wife Naomi, while the star studded supporting roles help carry the film from one propulsive wave to the next. A special mention has to go to Matthew McConaughey, whose now iconic, chest thumping cameo at the beginning of the film might very well have stolen the entire show if the rest of the film’s cast (including Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jean Dujardin, John Bernthal, Joanna Lumley and John Favreau) weren’t exceptionally strong.

For all its hilarity and taboo inducing high jinks, The Wolf of Wall Street does slow down in its final hour to find genuine darkness in Jordan Belfort’s story. As his marriage falls apart and the wolves begin to scratch at the door, a sense of bleakness helps to balance out the final, sputtering sparks of comedy. Watching it again, the ending felt even more disheartening and existentially hollow than Goodfellas, showing that while Scorsese’s film very well might be his funniest, it can also stand up as one of his grittiest explorations of masculine ambition, hubris and the temptations that can snare and destroy. 

Scorsese has enjoyed a golden period at this late stage of his career. From the studied classicism of Silence to the sombre depth of The Irishman, it is clear that some of his key works will be attributed to this Indian summer of creativity and achievement. The Wolf of Wall Street will likely stand toe to toe with these late period masterworks. This was Scorsese exhibiting his most virtuoso film making in years, crafting a film that was explosive, dynamic and continually propulsive, fuelled, as the critic Richard Brody said, by a ‘furious yet exquisitely controlled kinetic energy’.

You can’t trust much of what you read on the Internet, but that you can take to the bank.

Film:

Arrow are releasing The Wolf of Wall Street in two beautiful new editions, one in 4K and one on Blu Ray. I received the 4K edition for review, which offers a director approved 4K transfer. Don’t expect any huge night and day differences between the old Blu Ray and this release; instead see it as more of a refinement. Detail obviously gets a wonderful upscale but the Dolby Vision grade aims for subtlety, adding depth to the image without sacrificing any sense of realism. Overall, the image is wonderfully sharp, detailed and naturalistic, which, while possibly boasting a slightly darker and more aggressive contrast than the previous Blu Ray, should still please and delight long time fans of the film. The original DTS 5.1 track is punchy and detailed to boot. 

Arrow’s package comes on two discs. The first disc contains the film, a commentery and an introduction from Ian Christie. Christie’s offers a concise and insightful 15 minute introduction to the film, linking The Wolf of Wall Street to some of Scorsese’s earlier work, such as Goodfellas and Casino, as well as discussing how the film was a fresh start for Scorsese, re-invigorating his career. The commentary from film critics Glenn Kenny and Nick Pinkerton is deliciously meaty and informative, offering a great balance between technical analysis, characters discussion and tying the film into the rest of Scorsese’s work. At points there is slightly too much direct reading from other sources, but overall this is a fabulous listen.

The second, Blu Ray only, disc contains the bulk of the remaining extras, which contain a mixture of newly produced content from Arrow, along with a selection of archival material. Arrow offer us two new interviews with Writer Terrance Winter and Production Designer Bob Shaw. Winter discuss the journey to getting film made, trying to write in style of Goodfellas as well as the difficultly of balancing the likability of characters with their darker actions and crimes. Shaw provides an informal and interesting chat, describing his choices behind the aesthetics of the film, as well as the many times he actually had to improvise and come up with set and production design choices quickly. Arrow also provide us with two visual essays. The first, helmed by Simon Ward, provides an insightful and technical breakdown of the comedy of The Wolf of Wall Street, directly comparing it to Scorsese’s other outright comedy, After Hours. The next extra, and possibly the best one on the disc, sees film critics Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain explore Jordan Belfort’s lesser known career as a low budget movie producer, going through each of the films he was involved with. This is an essential watch for any fans of 90s straight to video flicks.

The rest of the disc is made up of archival extras, including a short roundtable discussion between Scorsese, Winter, Hill and DiCaprio (I wish this had been longer), two EPKs (which actually manage to cover quite a lot of ground) as well as eleven minutes of behind the scenes footage. Trailer and TV spots are also included.

Although I didn’t get to see it for this review, Arrow are releasing The Wolf of Wall Street in a deluxe, limited edition package that includes a Wolf of Wall Street luxury ‘wallet’, American Excess Credit Card, Business Card, and Stratton Oakmont Banknote, along with a 60 page book.

It is clear that this release has been a labour of love for Arrow – they have given one of Scorsese’s late career masterpieces the edition it deserves. Don’t hesitate to pick this one up.

Disc/Extras: