Probably the most obvious trait that both The Wolf of Wall Street and Goodfellas share is the focus on one central character, a successful criminal in both instances, spanning the course of his rise to his fall and his arrest years or decades later. They both have rather large stories to tell, and with the story of Henry Hill’s life clocking in around two and a half hours and Jordan Belfort’s rounding out three hours, they’re given the space to delve fairly deeply into the many defining episodes of each character’s narrative.
The rise and fall of the powerful man is each film’s focus, with the rise meant to entice and titillate the viewer to a certain extent, and the fall to shake us out of the hypnotic trance the movie has put us under by seducing us into this lifestyle of power and temptation.
The imitation of the style of Goodfellas, even an attempt at recapturing some of its unique and mad energy, is obvious and meant to make certain points that their differences bring up more clearly. Some of the musical choices Scorsese uses, modern cover versions of classic tunes like “Sloop John B” and “Mrs. Robinson,” could also be inserted to indicate his awareness of this.
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