The Wolf Of Wall Street

PLOT

In 1987, Jordan Belfort lands a job as a Wall Street stockbroker for L.F. Rothschild, employed under Mark Hanna. He is quickly enticed into the sex and drug-fueled stockbroker culture and passes on his idea that a broker's only goal is to make money for himself. Jordan loses his job following Black Monday, the largest one-day stock market drop in history, and takes a job at a boiler room brokerage firm on Long Island that specializes in penny stocks. Thanks to his aggressive pitching style and the high commissions, Jordan makes a small fortune.

Jordan befriends his neighbor Donnie Azoff, and the two found their own company. They recruit several of Jordan's friends, whom Jordan trains in the art of the "hard sell." Jordan's tactics and salesmanship largely contribute to the success of his pump and dump scheme, which involves inflating the price of a stock through issuing misleading, positive statements in order to sell it at an artificially augmented price. When the perpetrators of the scheme sell their overvalued securities, the price drops immensely and those who were conned into buying at the inflated price are left with stock that is suddenly worth a lot less than what they paid. To cloak this, Jordan gives the firm the respectable-sounding name Stratton Oakmont in 1989.

After an exposé in Forbes, hundreds of ambitious young financiers flock to his company. Jordan becomes immensely successful and slides into a decadent lifestyle of prostitutes and drugs. He has an affair with a woman named Naomi Lapaglia; when his wife finds out, Jordan divorces her and marries Naomi in 1991. Meanwhile, the SEC and the FBI begin investigating Stratton Oakmont.

In 1993, Jordan illegally makes $22 million in three hours upon securing the IPO of Steve Madden. This brings him and his firm further to the attention of the FBI. To hide his money, Jordan opens a Swiss bank account with corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel in the name of Naomi's Aunt Emma, who is a British national and thus outside the reach of American authorities. He uses the wife and in-laws of his friend Brad Bodnick, who have European passports, to smuggle the cash into Switzerland.

Donnie and Brad get into a public brawl; Donnie escapes, but Brad is arrested. Brad does not say a word about Donnie or Jordan to the police. Jordan learns from his private investigator that the FBI is wiretapping his phones. Fearing for his son, Jordan's father advises him to leave Stratton Oakmont and lie low while Jordan's lawyer negotiates a deal to keep him out of prison. Jordan, however, cannot bear to quit and talks himself into staying in the middle of his farewell speech. In 1996, Jordan, Donnie and their wives are on a yacht trip to Italy when they learn that Aunt Emma has died of a heart attack. Jordan decides to travel to Switzerland immediately to settle the bank account. To bypass border controls, he orders his yacht captain to sail to Monaco, but the ship capsizes in a storm. After their rescue, the plane sent to take them to Geneva is destroyed when a seagull flies into the engine; Jordan takes this as a sign from God and decides to sober up.

Two years later, the FBI arrests Jordan because Saurel, arrested in Florida on an unrelated charge, has informed the FBI on Jordan. Since the evidence against him is overwhelming, Jordan agrees to gather evidence on his colleagues in exchange for leniency. At home, Naomi tells Jordan she is divorcing him and wants full custody of their daughter and infant son; in an impulsive, cocaine-fueled rage, Jordan tries to drive away with his daughter and crashes his car in the driveway. Later on, Jordan wears a wire to work but slips a note to Donnie, warning him. The FBI discovers this, arrests Jordan, and raids and shuts down Stratton Oakmont. Despite breaching his deal, Jordan receives a reduced sentence of 36 months in a minimum security prison for his testimony and is released after serving 22 months. After his release, Jordan makes a living hosting seminars on sales technique.

CAST

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort

Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff (Danny Porush)

Margot Robbie as Naomi Lapaglia

Kyle Chandler as FBI Agent Patrick Denham

Rob Reiner as Max Belfort

Jon Bernthal as Brad Bodnick

Matthew McConaughey as Mark Hanna

Jon Favreau as Manny Riskin

Jean Dujardin as Jean-Jacques Saurel

Joanna Lumley as Aunt Emma

Cristin Milioti as Teresa Petrillo

Aya Cash as Janet

Christine Ebersole as Leah Belfort

Shea Whigham as Captain Ted Beecham

Katarina Čas as Chantalle Bodnick

Stephanie Kurtzuba as Kimmie Belzer

P. J. Byrne as Nicky Koskoff

Kenneth Choi as Chester Ming

Brian Sacca as Robbie Feinberg

Henry Zebrowski as Alden Kupferberg

Ethan Suplee as Toby Welch

Jake Hoffman as Steve Madden

Mackenzie Meehan as Hildy Azoff

Bo Dietl as himself

Jordan Belfort as Auckland Straight Line Host

Catherine Curtin as FBI Agent

Stephen Kunken as Jerry Fogel

Welker White as Waiter

Danny Flaherty as Zip (Lude Buying Teenager #1)

Ted Griffin as Agent Hughes

Steven Boyer and Danny A. Abeckaser as Investor Center Brokers

Donnie Kershawarz as Stratton Broker #3

Jeremy Bobb as Police Officer #2

Emily Tremaine as Cristy

Garry Pastore as Rao’s Patron #2

Victor Verhaeghe as Audience Member #5

Additionally, frequent Scorsese collaborator J. C. MacKenzie appears as Lucas Solomon, and Ashlie Atkinson appears as Rochelle Applebaum, a federal agent. Thomas Middleditch plays a stock broker who is rebuked and fired by Donnie. Fran Lebowitz appears as a judge. Spike Jonze has an uncredited role as Dwayne, a penny stock trader

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

based on the 2007 memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort. It recounts Belfort's perspective on his career as a stockbroker in New York City and how his firm, Stratton Oakmont, engaged in rampant corruption and fraud on Wall Street, which ultimately led to his downfall.