Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street (Mary Cybulski/Paramount Pictures)

“It was obscene—in the normal world” is how Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) describes his life in Scorsese’s new “gangster” movie (with stocks instead of guns, but we’ll get to that in a bit) after being told by his father (Rob Reiner) that what he has been doing with his business has been indecent. This moment makes a distinction more than clear: Jordan has put his company, Stratton Oakmont, which has been unloading crap penny stocks, into this category of the abnormal. It’s part of his mind-set, which is to acknowledge that his mega-rich, money-crazed LET’S-GET-NUTS lifestyle, which spreads to his colleagues, is not “normal,” but he indulges in it all the same.

Based on Belfort’s biography, The Wolf of Wall Street is a monumental look at three hours (which every critic and their mother has pointed out, also more on that in a moment) of a master sociopath/a man-child/and a high-functioning version of one of those dunces that Will Ferrell plays in his movies. After striking out as a real stockbroker on Wall Street—he got his license just before the market crashed in 1987—Belfort took a job selling these penny stocks, mostly worthless junk that was sold to working-class people and which advertised in Hustler, making 50 percent commission using a level of BS-speak to easily persuade folks.

But making two grand in one sitting wasn’t enough. When you’re addicted to money, nothing is ever really enough, a key to Belfort’s personality (a flaw but part of his modus operandi). So he ventures out on his own after being approached by a geek neighbor with big, fake white teeth (Jonah Hill, a performance worthy of Joe Pesci, but younger and a bit goofier), and Belfort becomes the head of his own small-time racket with small-town crooks, one of them a near unrecognizable Jon Bernthal from The Walking Dead, complete with gaudy goatee and muscles.

Scorsese’s latest film is a gangster saga because it’s about folks doing criminal things with the attitude of “Hey, we like doing it.” With the aid of Belfort’s narration, like Henry Hill’s in GoodFellas, the tone is not only unapologetic but there’s the sense that if Belfort hadn’t been caught, he would still be doing the same, at least in theory. The frightening thing, but also something the director and writer Terence Winter (of Boardwalk Empire fame) use for their satirical aims, is that they use this environment, where everything is technically, kinda sorta “legal,” and they just go nuts with it. Why not have a competition involving dwarves being literally thrown at a dartboard? Why not have madcap orgies on the way to an insane bachelor party in Vegas? When excess is the name of the game, don’t stop at the roof, tear it off. On Quaaludes.

The filmmakers don’t shy away from making Belfort the villain of his own story, but he’s someone we almost wish could change, but he won’t. When Belfort is caught by his first wife cheating with his future, and second, spouse (the wildly sexy and insanely talented Aussie actress Margot Robbie), there is a split-second where he looks ashamed… until he informs us he divorces three days later and quickly has his new flame move in with him. When he discusses certain former employees, he mentions how one or two of them did this or that, then later died or killed themselves. He’ll quickly follow it up with “but anyway.” He gets most incensed, now that I think of it, about getting busted due to, in a roundabout way, the owner of Benihana restaurants(!).

DiCaprio gives it his all, as he has to. There’s no other way than to make Belfort a hedonistic devil, first in training under the tutelage of the Master of the Universe (Matthew McConaughey, responsible for five of the funniest moments put on film in the past 20 years), then as a born leader—if only because everyone else around him is either dumber or just easily impressionable.

He’s charming, in a way, but DiCaprio never makes Belfort too sympathetic, while at the same time he still makes him painfully human, a complete f***-up at times (the other funniest moments put on film in so many years is Belfort and his partner-in-crime Donny, played by Hill, on Quaaludes and stumbling around in manic precision). This is what makes the film both so electrifying but something that is by its very nature divisive. It’s not a big crowd-pleaser, like GoodFellas—it does go too far, and it is, possibly, too long. But what exactly to cut is a much harder question, since it moves faster than most 90-minute movies. And its protagonist is the antagonist. He’s American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, one of the Jerky Boys (watch as he and his first team call up a seller, it’s a full-blown childish prank call), and a Roman general all rolled up into one package. And it’s DiCaprio’s best work.

And so it is for Hill, too, who we’ve never seen be this hysterical—sometimes because of the script, sometimes from improvisation—making this supporting character memorable and vital. Neither really has it together, but Donny is the more obvious screw-up type; he’s married to his first cousin (no kidding). And Robbie is a major find as Belfort’s “Duchess of Bayside Queens.” She’s able to go head-to-head with the star and sometimes tops him. There’s also a wonderful bevy of walk-ons by the likes of Spike Jonze as a penny-stock guy early on and Jean Dujardin as a slimy Swiss banker.

Ultimately, The Wolf of Wall Street asks a lot from its audience, because it is a mirror facing back to the financial upper-echelon or those that are going mad to get there. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much during a Scorsese film, from the wild physical comedy, pratfalls, and scenes that have a scary clarity of the characters’ sense of superiority over those that (gasp) don’t care about money every second of the day. The sickness of this world hits for those who really don’t think anything else is wrong. In the final scene, a group of people watch and listen attentively to a Belfort lecture, and no one ever questions that they are learning from a man found guilty of multiple acts of fraud.

The Wolf of Wall Street is the darkest, most excessive comedy out there. You laugh at Belfort and his ilk for three hours, and then realize only as you leave the theater that even if he never commits a crime again, his mentality and other Belforts live and profit on and on and on.