Wolf of Wall Street: You're not meant to find it sexy The Wolf of Wall Street, in case you hadn't heard, is adapted (by Terence Winter) from the memoirs of Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who in the 1990s routinely defrauded his clients and lived a hedonistic lifestyle with trophy wife, drugs, hookers, fast cars, mansion, luxury yacht and all the other trimmings. As portrayed in a virtuoso swaggering performance by Leonardo DiCaprio, he is big-mouthed and brash, delivering outrageous Alpha Male pep-talks to his adoring employees, in what is very likely the shoutiest film since Sidney Lumet's The Hill. At one point DiCaprio shouts so loudly his face turns beetroot red; I haven't worried so much about an actor's health since I saw the veins bulging in Tom Cruise's temples while he was running very fast in Mission: Impossible III. This is exhilarating because it's proof the 71-year-old director has still got what it takes to make an invigorating, challenging entertainment that is infuriating as many people as it delights. If you end up pleasing all the people all of the time, the chances are high that what you've made is pap. READ: The Wolf of Wall Street: meet the real bad guy But it's also dispiriting, because many of the film's detractors apparently think that if a film depicts something, it follows that the film-makers are condoning it, or are at least failing to condemn it when they ought to be showing wrongdoers getting their come-uppance, or coming to a sticky end, or being damned to hell. It's like Zero Dark Thirty all over again, when director Kathryn Bigelow and her screenwriter, Mark Boal, were accused of approving the use of torture, just because they showed it in the film. Perhaps in future all such films need an epilogue like the one at the end of Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (co-written by film critic Roger Ebert), in which the film's moral messages are explicitly and hilariously spelt out, just in case we'd missed them; "Casey and Roxanne, light and shadow - theirs was not an evil relationship..." It seems absurd that DiCaprio should have to comment, "This film may be misunderstood by some; I hope people understand we're not condoning this behaviour, that we're indicting it," and that Scorsese should need to tell The Wrap, "I don't know if it will be to everyone's taste. I don't think it will. It's not made for 14 year olds. To which I say, thank the Lord - we have enough family friendly films as it is; they're clogging my local cinemas right now. The Wolf of Wall Street, which contains a record 506 uses of the F-word, is unabashedly for grown-ups. And it's not as though Scorsese doesn't have past form. Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle goes on a shooting spree in New York City's red light district. King of Comedy's Rupert Pupkin goes to jail for kidnapping. Henry Hill in Goodfellas becomes a gangster and leads the life of Riley. In none of these films is there a moral message spelt out in neon letters, nor is the despicable behaviour of the protagonists explicitly condemned; indeed, in the first two instances it's rewarded. Yet Scorsese and his screenwriters credit viewers with enough wit to work out for themselves what's going on, and what the implications are. What everyone seems to be taking for granted, however, is that Belfort's lifestyle is seductive. It isn't - not for me, at any rate. This is possibly because I'm female, and the film is dealing with industrial levels of testosterone, but I'm sure there are plenty of men who, like me, have not the least desire to blow cocaine into a prostitute's bottom, or get out of their brains on Quaaludes, or swank around on a yacht. OK, maybe for five minutes, to see what it's like, but I bet the novelty would wear off quite rapidly, after which you'd just want to go to bed with a cup of tea and a good book. READ: Martin Scorsese faces mounting criticism over The Wolf of Wall Street Those wall-to-wall big houses and flashy cars and endless drugs and hookers and parties might look like fun to a certain type of shallow idiot incapable of reflection or independent thought, but if this is considered the pinnacle of what capitalist society has to offer, we're in worse shape than I thought. Watching three hours of Jordon Belfort behaving badly is a blast, but this doesn't mean I'd want to go to one of his parties, or even be in the same room as him, and I have absolutely no need of editorialising from the film-makers to reassure me that his behaviour is reprehensible. In any case, I don't need to be told he is damned, because his life already looks like my idea of hell.