DVD OF THE WEEK

You know how in Richard III the villainous title character is forever turning away from the action to sweet-talk the audience into forgiving him his sins?

Well, Leonardo DiCaprio pulls the same stunt in The Wolf Of Wall Street.

Leo plays Jordan Belfort, a real-life Wall Street con-artist who scammed his clients for millions and then, when the FBI arrested him for fraud, promptly sold his partners-in-crime down the river. In other words, he’s a nasty piece of work, although director Martin Scorsese doesn’t seem to notice. The movie’s three hours whizz by, but as the credits roll, you might feel, like Belfort’s clients, that you’ve been had. Which is, of course, the point. Like it or not, we were all complicit in the great financial crash we’re still living through. Scorsese has finally found a subject fitted to his worship of amorality. And he’s found a cast to make it sing. DiCaprio’s scowling, howling star-turn deserved its Golden Globe, but don’t miss Matthew McConaughey as Jordan’s sleazy mentor, Jonah Hill.

More lupine lunacy in Big Bad Wolves, an Israeli tragedy about a kidnapped child. The plotting is reputedly clever, but the violence – hammers, hacksaws – meant I didn’t see all that much of it.

Honour is hard-going, too. Paddy Considine is a London-based bountyhunter on the trail of a missing Asian girl. But do her family want her back or want her dead? Thanks to the clumsy, flashback-heavy narrative style, it’s hard to care either way.