DiCaprio gets to let go physically and emotionally. He’s rarely asked to be unapologetically funny. But he and Scorsese have developed a trust. DiCaprio is free to play an asshole like Belfort and do the best work he has ever done in no small part because he’s not begging us to like him. That neediness in DiCaprio has always been a limitation. He likes parts with a clear psychological explanation for what he’s playing. This time he’s playing greed, and the hedonism and extravagance set him free. (To see him dance some type of robot dance to Bo Diddley at a wedding reception is essentially to die and go to cheeseball-disco heaven.) There are three or four scenes in which DiCaprio has to use a microphone to address the staff, and he gives those a rock ‘n’ roll televangelist charge. He loves the crowds in this movie. He seems to love the scenes with Hill, whose character is even more unstable than Belfort, and with the rest of the massive cast (Rob Reiner, Joanna Lumley, Jon Bernthal, Kenneth Choi, P.J. Byrne, Bo Dietl as himself).
One of those speeches is supposed to be a resignation speech, but he turns it into a steroidal James Brown routine. He contorts his face and body for this role. He turns into James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, Liotta, and Dick Van Dyke. You sense this is what Scorsese has been trying to do for DiCaprio all these years: unleash him. You also sense that is what Scorsese has been hoping to get out of working with a younger star: youth. But The Wolf of Wall Street is not just a young movie. Scorsese’s 71. He’s been around long enough to see what that one neighborhood of this city he loves has done to this country and to the world.
via Martin Scorsese’s excellent ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ – Grantland.
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