If The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as stockbroker Jordan Belfort, is anything to go by, then the answer is most definitely yes. The film (which I only now watched on DVD) is Goodfellas on steroids, an attempt by Scorcese to mimic that film's narrative, energy, and structure, but without its charm, pace, and control. Both films tell the story of one man's ascent into a particular fraternity that sees him acquire undreamt wealth as he succumbs to drug abuse and corruption, followed by his subsequent downfall and betrayal of his colleagues. Specifically, Wolf… is about excess in the stockbroker world, and ironically it suffers from a surfeit of excess. For one thing, at 2 hours and 52 minutes it is at least an hour or an hour and a quarter too long. Furthermore it is repetitious, wildly over the top, and unremittingly bombastic. The viewer is bombarded by numerous scenes of manic celebration that go on and on and on, propelled by whirlwinds of frenetic energy, with few breaks. In Goodfellas the energy was tightly controlled, at least until the dizzying sequence near the end of the film that perfectly replicated the cocaine-induced chaos and paranoia suffered by Ray Liotta's character, whereas Wolf… has so many similar but extended sequences that their impact is quickly blunted into boredom. Is Martin Scorcese so revered that no one dare tells him that he has no clothes? Couldn’t someone have surreptitiously slipped him a pair of scissors to trim the film's excess?
The film's one plus point is Leonardo DiCaprio's excellent performance, as he reveals a heretofore unseen side of himself, but it's not enough to save the film. In Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorcese tried to make a Martin Scorcese film, and failed miserably.