The financial world, in all its incarnations, makes for great cinema. Tragedy, comedy, ingenuity, catastrophe, and redemption are all present in the many finance movies that Hollywood has produced over the years.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
This Martin Scorsese-helmed biopic chronicles the rise and fall of a famous stock scammer, Jordan Belfort. It features excellent performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill.
“The Wolf of Wall Street” is based on real-life events. This finance film looks at the infamous Stratton Oakmont, an over-the-counter brokerage firm, and a pump-and-dump scheme that helped launch the IPOs of several large public companies during the late 1980s and 1990s.
Margin Call (2011)
Perhaps the most financially accurate movie on the list, “Margin Call” takes place over the span of 24 hours in the life of a Wall Street firm on the brink of disaster (modeled closely after some of the bulge bracket banks).
“Margin Call” does little to hide its contempt for the reckless risks taken by some of the largest banks in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. It highlights the trading of complex derivative instruments that investment banks themselves barely understood.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Though the events contained in the documentary “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” occurred more than 20 years ago, they still have the power to shock.
Based on the best-selling book of the same title, the film relies on a trove of video footage, congressional hearings testimony, and interviews with Enron executive Mike Muckleroy and whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, to argue that Enron, far from being a stellar energy corporation that lost its way, was actually a con game almost from the beginning.
