Scorcese's latest is an unmistakeable B-Movie, with massive honking, irony laden sound effects, plot developments, characters, and script (check out the first five minutes of the characters explaining the plot to each other). For all these reasons, it's a piece of damn good fun.
Yes, it's hokum, and yes, the realist lesson hasn't been given (quite deliberately, and happily, as we will come to). This is perfectly acceptable in this kind of film, which doesn't have the pretensions to do more than deliver a grand, long piece of entertainment. It instead lingers through mood, grand fast-moving plot, and deliberate homage.
DiCaprio, if the accent a little in and out, is decent. Ben Kingsley doesn't quite eat the furniture, as might have been more fun, but like the rest of the cast keeps it in his pants. All told, this is probably for the best, to stop it becoming too hysterical.
The homage is of course to Hitchcock, and the aesthetic he was part of it. There are endless nods to Psycho, Rope, North by Northwest, Vertogo...etc etc. The lighting, the shooting, the plot devices...it's all there. It is though Pastiche rather than Parody, and takes quite sincerely the references. This is not a joke, even if on occassion a laugh had to be stifled, and is properly scary at times.
All told, if a little long it's a good laugh and serves its purposes excellently. Not Scorcese's attempt at a masterpiece, but rather a memory and a effort at all he loves.
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