I think it's a good time to just leave this here
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/wolf_of_wall_street_prousalis.php?
Haven't seen the movie yet, but these are the kinds of articles that usually come around this time of the year whenever a big movie comes out. Last year it was all about Zero Dark Thirty and its use of torture, then the gears shifted to how acurate Argo really was, and now this. The idea that people assume filmmakers should be the ones to morally judge their characters is completely weird to me. I mean, since we're talking about Scorsese, who doesn't watch GoodFellas and have fun with it. It's a riot, and yet it's about mob killers. The movie doesn't judge them, it hopes for the viewer to do so based on common sense.
What this article does is exactly what it shouldn't do. It tries to talk people out of watching a movie that, either for better or worse, is about a serious subject. Again, I haven't seen it, but even if during the whole 180 minutes of it we don't see the consequences of Belfort's actions, most viewers in the audience should know them very well, they probably are feeling them themselves. We always complain about how some films dumb down audiences, but when it comes to so called "important" subjects, everybody thinks they should be talking to their audience as if they're 5 years old. If people leave the theatre idolising Belfort, well, I'm sorry to say they are as big as idiots as the ones who left A Clockwork Orange wanting to be like Alex or the ones that left Fight Club wanting to be Space Monkeys.
But what really bothers me about this piece of writing in particular is how the writer sees herself as an innocent victim (and I don't doubt she was fucked over by her dad, most of these Wall Street guys are disgusting) and unaware of what was going on around her, but at the same time talks about how much coke she did. I'm sure the poor girl didn't know drugs were illegal, and a shit ton of people die in drug trafficking.
So yeah, if the movie is bad, or long, or whatever, I get it, but I just can't get behind these kinds of campaigns.