I enjoyed this film until I heard other people taking about it which made me re-evaluate.

The movie glorifies the worst of humanity and is almost congratulating in its appraisal of the appalling criminal behaviour of the protagonists.

In 'wall street' you're supposed to be disgusted by Gordon Gekko but in TWOWS there is no everyman Martin Sheen character as a counter point, there is no Charlie Sheen character wrestling with his conscience, there is only naked greed, work is for chumps, people are there to be exploited.

With Wall Street, Gekko became an icon of the age in spite of the message of the film, in TWOWS Belfort is lionised, the end.

I'd love to think that the audience is sophisticated enough to realise that in the absence of a moral to the story that they are being invited to draw their own conclusions. I'd also love to believe that the filmmaker is making a comment on the times by having no ethical subtext and that he intends the viewer to have a realisation.

From what I've seen and heard from others talking about the film, Scorsese has failed, his audience are not sophisticated enough, there is no widespread audience realisation. The film succeeds only in showing how vacuous and amoral our society has become.