The Wolf of Wall Street
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: December 25, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
75
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 47 Critic Reviews
Positive:
36
Mixed:
9
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 28, 2013
This telling of the tale possesses enormous cinematic energy and a killer supporting cast full of hilarious delights. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyDec 25, 2013
What keeps the energy percolating is DiCaprio’s performance, in the loosest and most charismatic turn of his career. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 25, 2013
It is the best and most enjoyable American film to be released this year. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 24, 2013
If it had been a drama, The Wolf of Wall Street might have been unwatchable: There’s simply too much of everything. But Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) hit on the genius idea to turn the story into a riotous comedy, one that keeps topping itself everytime you think it can’t possibly get crazier. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 24, 2013
The Wolf of Wall Street joins "After Hours" as the most openly comedic films Scorsese has made. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyDec 24, 2013
A very fast three hours, Wolf is a fascinating, revolting, outlandish, uproarious, exhilarating and exhausting master work on immorality. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 18, 2013
DiCaprio's swaggering, swinging-dick performance is the wildest damn thing he's ever put onscreen. Read full review
100
EmpireDamon WiseDec 18, 2013
The oddest thing of all about The Wolf Of Wall Street is also the most unusual for a Scorsese film: it is incredibly, incredibly funny. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedDec 17, 2013
Sensational entertainment. This $100 million extravaganza is — let’s face it — rampantly over the top. Hell, it’s by Martin Scorsese, who is always over the top. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinDec 17, 2013
As hot and wet as freshly butchered meat: every second, every frame of its three-hour running time is virile with a lifetime’s accumulated genius. Read full review
100
Total FilmRob JamesDec 17, 2013
A touch too long, yet never slack, at three hours, TWOWS benefits from independent funding, Scorsese’s brass balls and an A-grade cast’s turbulent improvisations to emerge as an epic, boldly broad screwball comedy about the state of America, then and now. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 24, 2013
There’s a cracked logic, a genius almost, to the film’s amped-up irreverence. Maybe laughter isn’t just the best medicine, but the only sensible response to this much brazen amorality. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianMarc MohanDec 23, 2013
At a full three hours, the movie flirts with wearing out its welcome about two-thirds through, but recovers to end up an exhausting, operatic black comedy that leaves you wanting more. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 24, 2013
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is absurd, ridiculous, over the top, overindulgent, overlong, overstuffed, over-everythinged. And that is precisely the point. Read full review
90
The DissolveScott TobiasDec 22, 2013
Since Belfort and his crew are complete knuckleheads, every bit the low-class slobs who bray like animals on the trading floor, The Wolf Of Wall Street may be the funniest film of 2013, rife with gross misbehavior, pranks, and tomfoolery. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 25, 2013
One of the funniest yet most depressing movies in Martin Scorsese’s long career — a celebration and evisceration of male savagery, financial division. It’s like “GoodFellas,” only (slightly) more legal, which is very much the point. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsDec 25, 2013
The most exhilarating film of the year is also the most exhausting. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzDec 25, 2013
Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is abashed and shameless, exciting and exhausting, disgusting and illuminating; it's one of the most entertaining films ever made about loathsome men. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 23, 2013
Scorsese tells the Wolf’s story almost strictly from the Wolf’s point of view. We never see his victims. It’s actually an effective technique, because the Wolf certainly never really saw his victims either — not as actual human beings who could be hurt by his financial hocus-pocus. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 23, 2013
It's rambunctious and unruly, but mesmerizing. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 24, 2013
The feverishly paced film is hell-bent on making the audience feel like they just snorted a Belushian mountain of blow. You can practically feel your teeth grinding to dust. As with any high, though, it also doesn't know when to stop. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezDec 17, 2013
As an sensory experience, 'WOWS' is mostly a terrifically visceral one, a full throttle fast and furious bacchanalia of drug-fueled madness. But as a scathing indictment of American rapacity, it isn't particularly deep or resonant beyond the exterior. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 28, 2013
Any meaningful perspective on the greedfest of the period is obscured by the gleefulness of the depiction. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 24, 2013
This movie may tire you out with its hammering, swaggering excess, but it is never less than wide-awake. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 23, 2013
A delirious, manic, push-the-limits comedy of gaudy amorality that tests the audience’s taste. But it’s a gamble that works, since you leave this adrenaline trip wasted, but invigorated. Read full review
80
Time OutKeith UhlichDec 19, 2013
Scorsese, that sly spiritualist, is out to make us sick on commerce and greed run rampant. He moves us beyond the allure of avarice so that we might take better stock of ourselves. What starts as a piggish paean becomes, by the end, an invigorating purge. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonDec 17, 2013
Scorsese never digs too deeply under the skin of these reprehensible playboy douchebags, and there are times where the swooping photography, smash-and-grab editing and toe-tapping soundtrack conspire to almost – almost – make us like them. But when the film’s cylinders are firing, it’s impossible not to be dragged along. Read full review
80
The GuardianXan BrooksDec 17, 2013
The Wolf of Wall Street, for all its abundant appeal, is no Greek tragedy. It lacks the wildness of Taxi Driver, the jeopardy of GoodFellas and the anguish of Raging Bull. Far better to view this as a stylistic homage, a remastered greatest hits compilation, an amiable bit of self-infringement. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 17, 2013
Nearly as extravagant as the characters it depicts, Martin Scorsese's comic, operatically-scaled film is, on a moment-by-moment basis, often madly entertaining due to its live-wire energy, exuberant performances and the irresistible appeal of watching naughty boys doing very naughty things. Read full review
80
VarietyScott FoundasDec 17, 2013
A big, unruly bacchanal of a movie that huffs and puffs and nearly blows its own house down, but holds together by sheer virtue of its furious filmmaking energy and a Leonardo DiCaprio star turn so electric it could wake the dead. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDec 18, 2013
Seemingly taking its cue from Belfort’s shenanigans, the film is completely without modulation. It starts with all the knobs cranked up to 11 and remains that way for the next three hours. While what’s onscreen is never uninteresting, its unrelentingness is exhausting. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 24, 2013
For all of its carnal frivolity, The Wolf of Wall Street lacks passion and purpose, qualities Scorsese at his best has in abundance. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreDec 23, 2013
Leonardo DiCaprio’s most charismatic performance ever anchors Martin Scorsese’s robust and raunchy lowlifes-of-high-finance comedy The Wolf of Wall Street. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnDec 17, 2013
There's no question about the efficacy of Scorsese's filmmaking prowess, only that he never knows -- or doesn't care -- to slow down and deepen the material. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 24, 2013
Been there, done that. As thrilling a filmmaker as Martin Scorsese continues to be, and as wild a performance as Leonardo DiCaprio dishes up as its morally bankrupt master of the universe, The Wolf of Wall Street seems almost entirely unnecessary. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 24, 2013
The Wolf of Wall Street remains one-note even at is most outré, an episodic portrait of rapaciousness in which decadence escalates into debauchery escalates into depravity — but, miraculously, not death. Read full review
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