????他們在Stratton Oakmont公司做的事情非常簡單，其實就是一種被許多人稱為“拉高出貨”(pump and dump)的經營策略的變體。這家公司慫恿不知情的投資者購買低價股，以推升股價，然后拋售自己持有的股票，進而謀取巨額利潤。如果你此前不了解這類騙局，除了貝爾福特照本宣科式的推銷辭令，你依然不會從這部電影中了解到這方面的經驗教訓。在這部電影中，直面鏡頭的貝爾福特解釋了一些騙人把戲，隨后打斷自己，說道，“但你不必關心這些事情。你只需要關心，我們是不是賺到了一大堆錢。”實際上，這個公式中的“出貨”部分幾乎完全不存在。我們根本沒有看到貝爾福特或其他人發瘋般地拋售股票。【直至電影的尾聲，他們才出售了該公司推動上市的史蒂夫?馬登鞋業公司(Steve Madden)的股票；僅此而已。】

????《華爾街之狼》與華爾街無關，就像《美國毒梟》(Blow)與可卡因無關一樣——《華爾街》(Wall Street)和《大而不倒》(Too Big to Fail)才是講述華爾街故事的商業電影。它講述了一位男子瘋狂揮霍財富的故事，他不斷地吸毒，享受性愛，然后繼續吸毒。這部電影的名稱和營銷手法往往帶有誤導性：它講述的不是一位股票騙子讓股市陷于癱瘓的故事，而是一位男子因短時間內賺取巨額財富而迅速變得放蕩不羈的故事，他怎么賺到這筆錢被視為一件與影片主旨幾乎毫無關系的事情。主人公完全可以是通過出售一家互聯網公司或者繼承了一筆遺產而輕松地變成了富豪。

????在這部影片中，喬丹?貝爾福特本來有可能成為一位像《黑道家族》( The Sopranos)中吸毒成癮的克里斯托弗?莫爾蒂桑蒂那樣的古惑仔。那些質疑《華爾街之狼》究竟是縱容還是譴責貝爾福特金融罪行的問題毫無意義，因為這部電影根本就不關心這檔事。要尋找這種漠不關心的證據，你只需看一看迪卡普里奧在8月份為貝爾福特錄制的那段奇怪的視頻就知道了。“喬丹為具有變革意義的雄心壯志和辛勤工作等品質樹立了一個光輝榜樣，”他說。雄心壯志？的確有。但這部電影似乎并沒有交代他是如何“辛勤工作”的。

????對于這部電影（和原著）而言，一個更貼切的名稱或許應該是《安眠酮之狼》( The Wolf of Quaaludes)。【只不過，在接受《瓊斯母親》雜志( Mother Jones)采訪時，丹尼?波魯什（喬納?希爾飾演的唐尼?阿佐夫的原型）聲稱，他不記得有人曾經把貝爾福特叫做狼；《福布斯》( Forbes)一篇關于貝爾福特本人的特寫報道——與這部電影描述的形象完全不同——根本就沒有使用這個昵稱。】

????那么，影迷們究竟渴望一部商業電影佳作講述什么故事呢？我建議你去看《怒海劫運》(A Hijacking)。去年6月份在美國上映時，這部丹麥電影并沒有獲得應有的關注。它的情節與講述索馬里海盜劫持一艘貨船的電影《菲利普斯船長》(Captain Phillips)有些類似，但有一個重大區別：這部電影超過一半情節都集中在安穩地坐在辦公室中的航運公司CEO身上。他沒有聽從專家意見，決定親自處理此事，通過電話和傳真與劫持者直接談判。影片剛一開始，這艘輪船就被劫持，自那以后，船上本身并沒有發生多少故事，但公司總部卻上演了驚心動魄的一幕：這位名叫彼得?盧德維格森的高管面臨來自公司董事會的巨大壓力。董事們并不認為這是一場生死攸關的危機，而是把它看成一項旨在節省成本的商業交易。觀看他一步步陷于崩潰是一件讓人難以接受、但很有吸引力的事情。這部影片由此提出了一些關于經商倫理的重要問題，而《華爾街之狼》對這類問題并不感興趣。

????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.