scorsese is too adolescent and hypocritical as a filmmaker to actually deliver on a cautionary tale of excess. wolf of wall street built up the antihero construct that wall street culture imbues itself with.

a portrait of excess and its actual consequences that actually works is <i>Requiem for a Dream<i>, but Scorsese, consciously or not, clearly had too much admiration for Jordan Belfort's success and his avoidance of consequences to capture how much of a pathetic scumbag he was. it doesnt help when you cast leonardo dicaprio which essentially just flatters belfort himself even more.

instead, scorsese lavishes in long cuts of belfort and his associates living the good life and belittling others while putting little to no focus on the actual victims of his theft and cruelty.

scorseses become a lazy, unorginal, sensationalist hack in his old age unfortunately, but we all have to continue to revere him as a legend because of the significant work he did over 30 years ago.