Kevin's Watch

Hmmm. Saw this last night and yes - it was good [very rude in places but ceratinly good]. BUT, I'm just not sure where the film leaves me. Did I want this greedy little creep to 'win in the end' - I don't know, I never really got to like him [nb in case you think this is a spoiler, it isn't - I'm not saying whether he does or doesn't]. Leonardo diCaprio is great as ever, playing much the same role as that of Frank William Abagnale [but on steroids] but I'm not sure it's his best. By the end he's looking decidedly worse for wear as a result of the massive quantities of drugs, alchohol and hoors he consumes on a daily basis and I confess, I was never quite sure whether the youthfull DiCaprio look is at last starting to look ragged, or whether it was the make up intending him to look this way.

The supporting cast were good [especially given that for much of the time they were naked] and in particular Jonah Hill who was worse even than Di Caprio's Belfort in terms of his drug consumption and who married his cousin simply because she was fit ["and I wasn't going to have anyone else fucking her was I?"]. But at the end I struggled to find the film's heart. This probably sounds bullshit, but it's just the way it is. It all left me a bit cold and I never quite got whether I was supposed to come away feeling "Yeah" - Let's go fuck the little guy and set rich!", or with a self rightious sense of having just smelt someone elses shit.

It's like most of Scorsese's work over the last two decades....A stylish, yet empty vessel.

I saw an article that asserted that this was the final installment of a trilogy spanning Goodfellas and Casino. Really, it's about the American dream and the lengths people to get there. And how the rules protect the elite from the consequences of their crimes. And how we are all complicit. And how that reality simply is, rather than being a bullet point in a morality play. I found it to be a masterpiece of cinema, both as entertainment and as a story with stark and troubling substance.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Hedonism at its finest.