During the first hour or so the film is all about the cut as Scorsese and Schoonmaker juggle a lot of heavy exposition, three complex central characters and three integral secondary characters. There are plenty of pleasures to be had–it is a return to form–and the way we move from scene to scene and character to character is handled with the kind of craft we expect from Scorsese (the intricate temporal and spatial shifts seem effortless and Scorsese uses pop and rock songs, once again, to hold everything together). Still, something was missing; the film felt a bit rushed and I wasn’t as invested as I thought I would be. And then Scorsese slows the train down a bit, tightening his focus and racheting up the suspence as the “cat and mouse” narrative kicks in. There is a set piece I won’t spoil by describing, but it is a blistering, anxiety inducing, white hot sequence in which the dramatic action takes its inevitable turn for the worse. For the next 75 minutes, the film is an unrelentless yet highly entertaining masterclass in cinematic, edge of the seat, tension. The acting is excellent; DiCaprio, in particular, is a marvel and Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg accomplish a lot in very small bursts of energy. Jack does his best, but I think a scene or two explaining a turn to oddball behavior ended up on the cutting room floor. Still, it was a damn fun, ugly, brutal, bloody ride. I probably need to see it again.