Trailer Talk: 'The Wolf of Wall Street' Blasts Corporate Excess Anew

Greed is good enough for a repeat performance this fall during the heart of Oscar season.

The trailer for director Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street debuted this week, giving us a peek at another tale of corporate excess.

Somewhere, Michael Douglas is smiling.

This time, it’s not Douglas’ fictional character, Gordon Gekko. making a mint in the 1980s but Jordan Belfort doing the same roughly a decade later. He’s a handsome Wall Street maven who couldn’t collect enough toys until the law caught up with him.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Belfort, and the film’s sterling supporting cast includes Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler and Matthew McConaughey.

The trailer is pure modern-day Scorsese, filled with razzle-dazzle shots, oversized emotions and a dollop of edgy humor. Here, McConaughey does the honors with some silly, but well delivered shtick. It’s hard not to imagine the actor, whose career continues to gather kudos after a string of forgettable rom-coms, won’t be in the Best Supporting Actor mix come Fall.

Scorsese is no Oliver Stone, so corporate sucker punches should be in short supply unlike Stone’s celebrated Wall Street feature. Still, it’s hard not to imagine film critics salivating over a one percenter who gets what’s coming to him. Does it matter that the film’s more famous cast members have many of the riches embodied by the on-screen Belfort?

The Wolf of Wall Street hits theaters Nov. 15.

Correction: The post originally stated the film was set during the 1980s.