Martin Scorsese directs the story of a man that reached fortune by becoming really good at doing illegal activities and eventually got in trouble with the law in part for his careless behavior and in part for the bad companion he associated with.

One of the few good things of the movie is how it accurately describes the aggressive and intense scene stockbrokers and sellers in general live in, unfortunately that had been done before and done better. Other than that, the movie is just a collection of depraved anecdotes set in slow-mo sequences with cool music (usually "borrowed" from other movies) and that makes it a genuine snore fest (literally, there were people snoring in the audience)

I really wanted to like it, but it turned out to be one of the most boring movies I've ever seen, and I've seen the 'English Patient'. I really don't understand why the movie tries so hard to rub in our faces Jordan Belford's excessive and decadent lifestyle, which btw wasn't as shocking as I was expecting.

It's funny how critics bash repetitive action and destruction scenes in movies like 'Transformers' or 'Man of Steel', but praise repetitive morbid scenes in movies like this one, when in both cases is a tedious experience.

For the first time ever I found myself attending a movie in which I wasn't interested in anything that was going on or cared for any of the characters and when that happens one starts noticing a lot of continuity and edition mistakes that not even direct to DVD movies have, like when a character is supposed to be speaking but even from a behind shot we can see the actor isn't talking at all or the infamous Leonardo Dicaprio "magic pants" scene. But the biggest sin of the movie is that it sacrifices the essence over the form, and by that I mean the pace of the story.

Once you get over the so called "controversial" scenes, you realize the pace is slower than grass growth, because the story didn't need a 3 hour movie to be told. The length of the movie was a consequence of the depraved overkill. Don't believe me? Take agent Denham for instance (the character played by Kyle Chandler) he was introduced 10 minutes into the movie, so we have a pretty good idea of his role in the story and where it's going, however the character speaks his first line 90 minutes after he's introduced (that's right, I was so bored I started timing things like that)

Grasp that for a few secs. Ninety minutes! I could have walked out, watched 'Gravity' (again) walked back in and the character wouldn't have yet said anything. And how does the plot unfolds in those 90 minutes? It doesn't, all we see is sex, drugs and partying over and over again. I haven't read the book but I believe Scorsese could've made the movie more engaging if instead of focusing so much on Belford's life would have shown how his actions affected people, I mean we're talking about lifetime savings that were robbed and that resulted in broken families,hundreds (if not thousands) of people losing their homes, their health and even their lives. It could've at least bonded emotionally with the audience.

But the fact is, if you've seen the 2 min trailer you already know 90% of the story and even worse, the remaining 10% has also been done before and done better when it was called 'Casino' (btw, the first paragraph of this review was copy / pasted from a review of that movie) which was an exciting story, however when seen in WoWS it seems wasted and clichéd and of course you may also take into account that even when their performances were good, Jonah Hill is no Joe Pesci, Margot Robbie is no Sharon Stone and unfortunately Leo Dicaprio is no Bobby Deniro.

So my recommendation is sneak in, wait until McConaughey's performance is over and then leave.

Don't believe the hype

4/10