Reviews

As far as I'm concerned there is some great acting (Carice van Houten, Barry Atsma and Anna Drijver do a great job with what is given) and there is nothing wrong with the way the director chose to tell the story. He may not be the most original or most experienced, but it was adequate at least.

I particularly liked the fact-of-the-matter style of portraying the scenes concerning the whole process of going through the diagnostics and the treatments in the hospital. The scene where Carmen says goodbye to her little daughter was also very well done; of course such a scene is touching by itself, so it's hard not to make it tacky. It wasn't.

What bothered me throughout the film however is that it is very hard to identify with the main characters or at least grow to understand them. That is not an acting nor a directing flaw, that flaw is embedded in the way the original story is written.

The autobiographical story stays annoyingly shallow and self-centered in it's explanation of the motivations for the behaviour of the main character (himself) with little character development nor room to really learn to understand him. At the same time the way the writer portrays the character of his wife stays shallow as well, not giving us as the viewer/reader a lot of insight in her decisions, drivers or emotions. There are only some scenes that gave us a glimpse of that, like the one that I mentioned earlier with the last goodbye to her daughter, and the one in which she breaks down in the tunnel after the party. Those were also the better and more moving scenes.

To summarise: good acting, good directing, flawed story.

This film kept lurking in my head for a while, but not because I was taken by it. I just kept wondering why I got so bored. Even though DiCaprio performs very well (as usual) and there were nicely put comic notes, it just didn't capture me very much. Only the final parts were slightly more engaging. I now know why; the entire story as well as pretty much every character stayed flat and superficial. Nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing insightful, nothing unexpected, no shock, cringe or excitement. However, the part when Jordan (temporarily) changes his ways has an element of surprise; that is because you get no clue on how he did that (or even why, other than his realisation that he's been found out), what process that was and what part anyone around him played in it. Wasn't interesting maybe because of the lack of drugs and hookers?

It does depict empty sales pretty well, you could say. Sales that is only about making people give you their money without exchanging anything valuable for them, with no consideration for the long term relationship or consequences. Some still think that is what good sales is about; it is not. That is just criminal. You might argue that someone like Jordan Belfort is indeed that flat and superficial, but I have a hard time believing that. I suspect as a psychopath, that is just the picture Belfort prefers to sell. There was one character slightly more intriguing, in the beginning, and that was Mark Hanna, probably because he was played so well by Matthew McCounaghy.

Didn't see the first movie, but I'm not very much inclined to go see it now. My 11-year old was very disappointed with the way the story abruptly ends with a 'to be continued' and I could only agree with her.

Although all the elements for an exciting adventure are there, somehow it isn't put together very well. There are too many details that have not been worked out well, specifically with a lot of the characters. The villain from the title doesn't appear until the last quarter of the movie, and just when you think the story is finally going to unravel, it's finished! Open endings can be interesting, but I wouldn't call this an open ending. The boy is still not back, his (grand)parents are still searching, the central matter that most of the movie evolves around has not been solved in any way and even in the end I had no clue to what the revenge of Malthazar was going to be. Being big and in the real world couldn't be all of it, could it?

To me it seemed like only half a movie, or the first part of a miniseries on TV. Outrageous that I was nowhere warned for this!