"The Wolf of Wall Street" (English)

Martin Scorcese has been making films since 1964 and is regarded as a Hollywood legend who makes hard-hitting films with lot of visual effects and verbiage. He forged bonds of creative trust with actors like Robert de Neiro and now Leonardo DiCaprio. "The Wolf of Wall Street" is Martin's latest film with Dicaprio starring the latter as Jordan Belfort, the broker who made a killing in penny stocks and created a business empire that lured hundreds of aspirants from all walks of life - bakers, mechanics and retirees. Martin Scorcese's last film "Hugo" carried his stamp but the present film based on the same book written by Belfort is a throwback to the anarchist days of the 80s where the market cap to GDP ratio was below 1 and Reagan's years made it a national rage to own common stocks and brokers were divinely bestowed with tips.

Martin shows the Wall Street culture that is still the meanest in the world - with characters who sizzle in sex, lies, drugs and greed. Here is Belford who is indoctrinated into a dizzy culture of dope and sex while ripping off clients on over-churned stock portfolios. Belford tastes blood early and becomes the pet broker in his office. He figures out a new way to put hands in the wallets of customers: recommend penny stocks which are not traded regularly on the bourses which pays 50 per cent commissions - something similar to our trading in illiquid physical shares or micro cap stocks in low-trading category. Belfort fires up the opportunity and creates his own firm in due course which attract hordes of brokers in Wall Street firms. But Belford understands the selling cycle from telecalling to pitch to close. That makes him take on folks from unconventional backgrounds and mould them to deliver, this includes guys like Jonah Hill who crack the code of fast-pitching and over-trading in dud stocks.

The Success trap shows some sick humor with explicit sex scenes, substance abuse and scant regard to the person who pays all of the broker's bills - the poor customer. Belfort breaks up with his wife, seduces another man's wife who attends his lavish party, continues his tireless induction of hundreds of colleagues to plunder stocks, rip off clients, and that is when the chickens come home to roost - when FBI is tipped off in a trading scandal about a stock they made a killing. Belfort becomes a wreck because of this sex-and-drug addiction; he gets into deeper mess of money-laundering, offer of bribe to a FBI officer and stuff like that which pulls him down. Yet, he walks scot-free in the end and becomes a sales trainer.

 That makes "The Wolf of Wall Street" one of Martin's most irresponsible films that neither reflects the changing times nor give a new message to Wall Street admirers: Make merry at work, milk your customers, make love and get high on drugs. It is unlikely that the film despite an awe-inspiring performance by Dicaprio will every be counted as a classic in the elite company of films like "Wall Street", "Wall Street  Returns", "Boiler Room" or "In Pursuit of Happyness'. It is just shown as a law of the jungle without a message of uprighteousness or taking a high moral ground. It shows Martin's lack of familiarity or research on a topic well brought in the book. Martin presented the story but could have given the class of Oliver Stone to deliver a better script with loose ends upended. Regulators in US are no longer pro-cyclical and have moved on - you can't trade without compliance watching you as big brother, you cannot talk about your customer disparagingly because the "Access to Review" rule works against you - if you refer to a customer as an idiot or a dodo in your peer convesations, it can be a recordable fact of evidence used against you. Most of the dialogues are those spoken in the inner recesses of day-traders' minds and contain the word "fuck" too many times in each sentence. The slang is atrocious and contain fond unmentionables. It looks as if Martin wanted the audience to take a call on all those who thrive on the culture of preying on other people's money . Martin also dwelt too much on the same routine of pepping up colleagues to pitch products resulting in a film that close to 3 hours. Had he not chosen the film to the novel, Martin would have scored new highs with an in-your-face  narration on the different dimensions of the brokers and advisors. It does glamorise the profession but leaves wrong messages for everybody who watches the film, strictly for adults. Despite Dicaprio's exuberance and portrayal and Martin's pacy narration, the film will be disowned by the brokers and Wall Street representatives because it is unreal today and the industry shown in the film has changed . Families should avoid it because what is shown is as good as "porn scum", one of the pet expressions used by the hero. 

My rating: 2 out of 5

"The Great Gatsby" Film Review (English)

Finally, one of America's greatest works of fiction finds an incarnation in the big screen. This is Hollywood's sixth attempt to capture the surrealistic  almost evanscent classic by one of the most conceptual novelists  - Francis Scott Fitzgerald. I must say, it is one of the most beautiful films I have seen in a long time, probably not since "Avatar" and at the end of the 146 minutes of a magical story with a trepid ending and a tragic twist in the tail, I get a feeling that Fitzgerald's efforts have not gone in vain. He was perceived as one of the improbable screenwriters who never quite made it to Hollywood despite gallant attempts to make a film on his novels. While  Fitzgerald's other stories have been made into films  - "The Last Tycoon", "The curious case of Benjamin Button" etc., "The Great Gatsby" made many false starts and failed attempts starring many ruling stars, including Robert Redford who looks like a million-dollar baby even in night dress.

Warner Brothers has left nothing to chance this time around - the sixth time around. They roped in a starcast of the decade - Leonardo Dicaprio as Jay"Great" Gatsby, Toby Maguire as Nick Carraway, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchannan,  Joel Edgerton as Daisy's husband and our own Amitabh Bachchan as the jewish businessman in a cameo that marks the Superstar's official entry into Hollywood. Who can direct such a starcast and take the magical, make-believe, hard-to-project vigorous words of Fitzgerald? Baz Luhrrmann  - who has a mind of his own and a unique gift of collapsing song, ballads and drama into celluloid opus. His earlier films - "Moulin Rage", "Australia", "Romeo and Juliet" have marked him out for the potential in TGG in 3-D. Luhrrmann creates an extravagant biopic that sizzles and rarely fizzles out. 

Nick Carraway (Toby Maguire) as in the book is the main narrator of the film who observes that his great fortune in life was in meeting the "great" Gatsby. He is a struggling writer who lives next door to the regal mansion of Jay Gatsby, a self-made, self-obsessed billionaire who throws the biggest and the loudest parties - inviting anybody who cares for drowning in food and wine and dance on the house - more inclusive than our own IPL post-match parties. Nobody knows what he does, how he earned such obscene wealth and what his background is. One day, he gets a hand-written invite from Gatsby to attend one of his parties and Nick is thrilled and paints the whole party that he is the only "chosen" one. Indeed he is for reasons learnt later; Nick's cousin Daisy Buchannan lives on the other side of West Egg, across a Bay married to her husband, her many-affaired husband. Gatsby and Daisy have been in love since he was 17 but filmy fate gave Daisy away in arranged marriage to  Buchannans. Nick soon finds that his new friend Gatsby wants him to re-arrange love with his old flame. Sparks fly, naturally, when Daisy makes it to the party but her husband, like all husbands gets wind of the secret liaisions of his wife. Many wranglings later, there is a twist in the tail as Buchannan speeds away in a fit of rage in the sporty car of Gatsby only to dash into one of Buchannan's lady-loves and kills her. But the husband, a gasoline-filler, is fed with the notion that it is Gatsby who drove his car that killed his wife and not the real paramour. Daisy is indifferent to Gatsby because she is confused between the moral limits of marriage and the catnip pull of Gatsby. But Gatsby remains composed and intriguing till the end, Nick playing the last man standing for him, even at the funeral which is the most poignant shot in the film - none who made it to his lavish parties except Nick turn up at the grave. That's the long story that cannot be made shorter but what makes the film a visual feast is the images, the songs, the contextual and the subtext messages coming through the times and the characters set in 1920s - when American stock markets were at life-time highs, economy was over the hill and society was both loud, hedonistic and vainglorious. 

What endears the film is its many messages because Fitzgerald's novel is itself so timeless because of its metaphors and its malleability to interpretations. The West Egg can be today's Bay Area, the new-age Silicon Valley, the East Egg can be the old money, and the characters can all be so spine-chillingly true - a  billionaire who refuses to give up the ghosts of the past, his friend who refuses to talk turkey for fears of antagonising both the parties, a woman who cannot reign in her wayward husband and cannot hide her feelings and vacillates till the end, an old-world husband who goes after Munnis and Sheelas but doesn't want to dock his wife and what more, expect loyalty. It is these images that make the story burnt into relevance forever ninety years after Fitzgerald wrote in 1925. Baz Luhhrmann makes a winner with minimal distractions of 3-D technology and memorable motifs of Fitzgerald's prose. Leonardo Dicaprio stands out with a quirkacious range of expressions, he gets the best introduction and also makes the exit in a watery grave in the end - exactly like in "Titanic". Can't believe his looks kill even today since his debut in 1997. Toby Maguire has a veneer and a role that will get him many new fans than just kissing boring girl-friend and climbing walls as Spiderman. Joel Edgerton as Daisy's husband has the best presence after the two. Music and SFX also stand out - heard that most of the SFX are created in the Reliance studios of Hyderabad and Mumbai. Its a great flick and must watch for a great synthesis of an American legend of literature with an Australian legend in directing. 4.5 out of 5.

"Inception" Movie Review: Hollywood

Its one of the mind-trip movies that make you work hard as a viewer from the director of “The Dark Knight” and “Memento” (Remember “Ghajini”?). Dicaprio is an extractor, a mind-thief who steals your darkest secrets while you are asleep.Ken Watnabe is a businessman who hires Dicaprio to invade the subconscious of a competitor (Cillian Murphy) and implant an idea that breaks up his business empire. In return, Dicaprio will get his name cleared in a crime he didn’t commit but which separates his wife from his family…

Nolan’s story-telling ability is flawless with unmatched visuals, ideas and execution that mark out the director who gave Hollywood’s best thinking movies. There is little relief in the movie in the IMAX version as Dicaprio sets out the plot to plunder someone’s inner mind with layers of consciousness, dreams within dreams and subconscious subterfuge. There are some dazzling visuals – like the city of Paris folding on top of itself, buildings imploding together, hero’s right-hand man floating through the hotel corridor. If you want to see a Hollywood original before it gets dumbed-down in some Indian remix, catch “Inception” but don’t expect fun.