《华尔街之狼》与商业无关

    他们在Stratton Oakmont公司做的事情非常简单，其实就是一种被许多人称为“拉高出货”(pump and dump)的经营策略的变体。这家公司怂恿不知情的投资者购买低价股，以推升股价，然后抛售自己持有的股票，进而谋取巨额利润。如果你此前不了解这类骗局，除了贝尔福特照本宣科式的推销辞令，你依然不会从这部电影中了解到这方面的经验教训。在这部电影中，直面镜头的贝尔福特解释了一些骗人把戏，随后打断自己，说道，“但你不必关心这些事情。你只需要关心，我们是不是赚到了一大堆钱。”实际上，这个公式中的“出货”部分几乎完全不存在。我们根本没有看到贝尔福特或其他人发疯般地抛售股票。【直至电影的尾声，他们才出售了该公司推动上市的史蒂夫•马登鞋业公司(Steve Madden)的股票；仅此而已。】

    《华尔街之狼》与华尔街无关，就像《美国毒枭》(Blow)与可卡因无关一样——《华尔街》(Wall Street)和《大而不倒》(Too Big to Fail)才是讲述华尔街故事的商业电影。它讲述了一位男子疯狂挥霍财富的故事，他不断地吸毒，享受性爱，然后继续吸毒。这部电影的名称和营销手法往往带有误导性：它讲述的不是一位股票骗子让股市陷于瘫痪的故事，而是一位男子因短时间内赚取巨额财富而迅速变得放荡不羁的故事，他怎么赚到这笔钱被视为一件与影片主旨几乎毫无关系的事情。主人公完全可以是通过出售一家互联网公司或者继承了一笔遗产而轻松地变成了富豪。

    在这部影片中，乔丹•贝尔福特本来有可能成为一位像《黑道家族》( The Sopranos)中吸毒成瘾的克里斯托弗•莫尔蒂桑蒂那样的古惑仔。那些质疑《华尔街之狼》究竟是纵容还是谴责贝尔福特金融罪行的问题毫无意义，因为这部电影根本就不关心这档事。要寻找这种漠不关心的证据，你只需看一看迪卡普里奥在8月份为贝尔福特录制的那段奇怪的视频就知道了。“乔丹为具有变革意义的雄心壮志和辛勤工作等品质树立了一个光辉榜样，”他说。雄心壮志？的确有。但这部电影似乎并没有交代他是如何“辛勤工作”的。

    对于这部电影（和原著）而言，一个更贴切的名称或许应该是《安眠酮之狼》( The Wolf of Quaaludes)。【只不过，在接受《琼斯母亲》杂志( Mother Jones)采访时，丹尼•波鲁什（乔纳•希尔饰演的唐尼•阿佐夫的原型）声称，他不记得有人曾经把贝尔福特叫做狼；《福布斯》( Forbes)一篇关于贝尔福特本人的特写报道——与这部电影描述的形象完全不同——根本就没有使用这个昵称。】

    那么，影迷们究竟渴望一部商业电影佳作讲述什么故事呢？我建议你去看《怒海劫运》(A Hijacking)。去年6月份在美国上映时，这部丹麦电影并没有获得应有的关注。它的情节与讲述索马里海盗劫持一艘货船的电影《菲利普斯船长》(Captain Phillips)有些类似，但有一个重大区别：这部电影超过一半情节都集中在安稳地坐在办公室中的航运公司CEO身上。他没有听从专家意见，决定亲自处理此事，通过电话和传真与劫持者直接谈判。影片刚一开始，这艘轮船就被劫持，自那以后，船上本身并没有发生多少故事，但公司总部却上演了惊心动魄的一幕：这位名叫彼得•卢德维格森的高管面临来自公司董事会的巨大压力。董事们并不认为这是一场生死攸关的危机，而是把它看成一项旨在节省成本的商业交易。观看他一步步陷于崩溃是一件让人难以接受、但很有吸引力的事情。这部影片由此提出了一些关于经商伦理的重要问题，而《华尔街之狼》对这类问题并不感兴趣。

    What they were actually doing at Stratton Oakmont was very simple, a variation on what many call "pump and dump." Stratton would push penny stocks on unwitting investors to drive the price up, then sell its own holdings and reap the profit. If you don't already know about such schemes you're not going to learn about it from this movie beyond the scripted sales pitch Belfort creates. The movie version of Belfort starts to explain some of his machinations directly to the camera only to interrupt himself and say "But you don't care about any of this. All you care about is whether we made a shitload of money." In fact, the "dump" half of the equation is almost completely absent. We never see Belfort or his people selling off equities like crazy. (They do it very late in the film with the Steve Madden (SHOO) stock they brought public; that's about it.)

    The Wolf of Wall Street is no more about Wall Street than Blow is about cocaine. (Wall Street, Too Big to Fail -- these are movies about Wall Street.) It's a portrait of a man who goes absolutely insane on his wealth: drugs, drugs, sex, and more drugs. The title and marketing of the movie have often been misleading: It isn't about a stock swindler bringing the market to its knees, but a guy who becomes rapidly indulgent thanks to having made a lot of money in a short time -- how he made that money is treated as almost irrelevant. The character in the film could just as easily have gotten rich from selling an Internet startup or from an inheritance.

    In this movie, Jordan Belfort could have been a young mafia guy like drugged-out Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos. Questions about whether the film condones or condemns Belfort's financial crimes are pointless because the movie doesn't care. For proof of that indifference, look no further than this strange video testimonial DiCaprio recorded for Belfort in August: "Jordan stands as a shining example of the transformative qualities of ambition and hard work," he says. Ambition, okay. Somehow the hard work part was left out of the movie.

    A more fitting title for the movie (and book) would have been The Wolf of Quaaludes. (Besides, Danny Porush, upon whom Jonah Hill's character Donnie Azoff is based, told Mother Jones he doesn't recall anyone ever calling Belfort a wolf; the real-life Forbes profile of Belfort -- unlike the one depicted in the movie -- did not use the nickname at all.)

    So what's a moviegoer hungry for a good business flick to do? Let us direct you to A Hijacking, a Danish film released in the U.S. last June that didn't get the attention it deserves. The movie's plot mirrors Captain Phillips -- Somali pirates hijack a cargo ship -- but with a key difference: More than half of the movie focuses on the ship company's CEO, holed away in his safe office, who takes it into his own hands (against expert advice) to lead negotiations with the hijackers by phone and fax. Once the ship gets taken hostage early on, nothing much changes on the boat, but the action at corporate HQ is thrilling as top exec Peter Ludvigsen deals with pressure from the board of directors to handle the crisis not as a matter of life and death but as a business transaction aimed at saving money. Watching him break down is difficult and fascinating, and raises important ethical questions about doing business -- questions The Wolf of Wall Street isn't interested in.