5 Reasons Leonardo DiCaprio Should Win Best Actor Oscar This Year (And 5 Reasons Why He Won't)

3. The Wolf Of Wall Street Is Too Controversial (He Shouldn't)

The Academy doesn't typically award films that make a splash if recognizing them could be seen as anything other than a bland political statement. The Wolf of Wall Street garnered controversy for purportedly promoting the lavish lifestyle of Wall Street crooks. It doesn't, in fact it's a pretty startling indictment, but after it has been heavily discussed as a potentially dangerous and subversive film any awards in its favor could be seen as support for bad behavior. Leonardo plays Belfort as a narcissist, delusional, wife-beating misogynist, certainly not a boy scout. The fact that the movie has encouraged legitimate discussion about how we view excess as a benefit of extreme wealth only serves to justify why the movie exists in the first place. Glorifying bad people doing bad things can be a constructive exercise in determining why we value certain beliefs over others, but that isn't even what the movie is. The Wolf of Wall Street warns the audience that revering people who steal from others is a bad thing, and if audiences didn't understand that it is likely a sign of their own confusion over the morality of white collar crime.