12 Movies Literally ONE Step From Perfection
4. The Wolf Of Wall Street – The Never-ending Third Act
Okay listen, there’s no need to go all Film School 101, “the medium needs to match the message” on us with this one.
Mean Streets director Martin Scorsese is a genius (and right about Marvel movies).
We get that the point of 2013’s blackly comic crime odyssey The Wolf of Wall Street having a never-ending third act is to illustrate that protagonist/ real-life scumbag Jordan Belfort’s life is one of unending, empty excess, and eventually the debauchery becomes grotesque and interminable instead of enjoyably hedonistic.
But Goodfellas made the same “all this amorality is just too much” point without tripping over the three-hour mark and making a re-watch an ordeal.