20 compelling movies about finance and Wall Street

Many movies about finance focus on high-powered executives, but others take a closer look at the ground level. Boiler Room,  for example, focuses on Seth Davis, who goes from running a casino in his home to becoming part of a brokerage firm. He soon discovers that there’s far more to the firm than meets the eye. It’s a film that is critical of corporate corruption and populated by a very talented cast, including Giovanni Ribisi as Davis and even Vin Diesel, who plays one of the members of the firm. 

Margin Call is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to its cast, which includes such heavy hitters as Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, and Demi Moore. Like so many films of 2011, it provides more perspectives on the 2008 financial crisis, which sent shock waves through all levels of American life. The brilliance of the film lies not only in its talented cast but also in its ability to take what could have been a dry adaptation of boardroom talk and scheming into a powerful piece of drama about one of the key events of the 21st century.

Whereas most films about the 2008 financial crisis focus on the events leading up to and during it, The Company Men focuses on its aftermath. The center of the story is Ben Affleck’s Bobby Walker, who loses his job at a major shipping company as a result of the downturn. Though he eventually manages to forge his career out of the ruins of his old one, the film is nevertheless noteworthy for showing the extent to which the recession turned many Americans’ lives upside down, forcing them to change the way they thought about themselves and their labor.

In 2010, Oliver Stone directed a sequel to his Wall Street, aptly titled Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Unsurprisingly, given its release date, it focuses on the 2008 financial collapse. Unsurprisingly, much of the pleasures the film offers revolve around the various financial wheelings and dealings that Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko engages in, and it also shows Stone’s continual development as a director, with an aesthetic that captures the chaos and technological advancements of the 21st century. As he did in the original, Douglas more than steals the show. 

Michael Douglas is unsettling and intense in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, in which he plays Gordon Gekko, the very epitome of Wall Street greed and ruthlessness. As is so often the case with Stone as a director, he manages to put his finger right on the pulse of American life, in the process showing just how corrupting greed is as a force in corporate life. Greed might be good, as Gekko asserts, but it also eats the soul of those who embrace it as an ethos to guide their life and actions. 

Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are an effective actor/director team in The Wolf of Wall Street, in which the former plays Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker infamous for his fraudulent activities in the 1980s and early 1990s. The film skillfully moves through numerous different registers, combining elements of black comedy and scathing social drama. It puts its toe right on the line of glorifying Belfort and his corrupt associates, but it also makes clear that Belfort was also very much the architect of his own demise. 

With Money Monster,  Jodie Foster again shows why she is as talented a director as an actor. The film stars George Clooney as the host of a popular financial TV show who is taken hostage by an angry investor, while Julia Roberts plays his producer. This is one of those films that really seemed to channel the anger many felt in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown and how the crisis revealed just how much corruption and callousness had taken root in America’s corporate class.

James Garner gives a memorable performance in Barbarians at the Gate, based on the investigative book of the same name by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. The center of the story is the financial manipulations around Nabisco. This could have been a dry film in less capable hands than director Larry Gelbart’s. However, thanks to his strong direction and the performances from such cast members as James Garner, Barbarians at the Gate becomes a fascinating look at the chicanery of corporate finance.

Danny DeVito is undeniably one of his generation’s most versatile actors, capable of giving a compelling performance no matter the genre. In Other People’s Money, he portrays “Larry the Liquidator” Garfield, a corporate raider who aims to take over a small-town cable company. It might not be quite as biting or heavy-hitting as one might want in a film about the benefits of small-town business and corporate takeover, but it’s still an enjoyable film. What’s more, it was the last major film appearance of the late Gregory Peck.

Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and disgrace were one of the major stories of the 2000s, and he stood as yet another example of the extent to which American corporate greed had become nearly all-consuming. In The Wizard of Lies,  he’s portrayed by Robert De Niro, who brings his unique brand of screen charisma to the role. While it is largely a paint-by-the-numbers biopic, its cast (including Michelle Pfeiffer and Lily Rabe) more than makes up for its predictable story beats.

In Arbitrage,  Richard Gere shows again why he is such a respected and beloved actor. His hedge fund character, Robert Miller, is morally ambiguous, and as the film goes on, he finds that both his personal and professional lives are at risk. However, Gere is just such a charismatic actor that viewers can’t help but cheer for his character despite, or perhaps because, he embodies so much of what makes corporate antiheroes so endlessly compelling.  

Given just how devastating the 2008 financial crisis was, it was inevitable that it would produce a cottage industry of films, both dramas and documentaries, attempting to understand its root causes. Inside Job certainly doesn’t pull its punches when it comes to examining the corporate greed in America that led to the collapse. It has all of the fire-breathing intensity of the documentaries of Michael Moore, but fortunately for some, it is less egregious in its trappings. It is one of those documentaries that is powerfully enlightening, even if it leaves one in some doubt as to whether the corporate world can ever be fixed.

Based on the play by David Mamet (who also wrote the screenplay), Glengarry Glen Ross focuses on a quartet of real estate salesmen who face unremitting pressure from their superiors to continue generating more provinces. It features the sort of snappy dialogue one expects of Mamet. At the same time, it also demonstrates how much corporate greed and the relentless desire for more profit can take their toll on those who are, when it comes down to it, mere cogs in the larger system. 

Few documentarians are as famous (or infamous) as Michael Moore, who has repeatedly held up a mirror to American society, revealing it in all of its corruption and hypocrisy. Capitalism: A Love Story is one of his most searing films, as he takes aim squarely at corporate America and its stranglehold on politics and life. While one might not always agree with Moore’s politics, there’s no question that he has a sense of style, and Capitalism, like so many of his other films, is undeniably thought-provoking and rabble-rousing.

Like so many other films about finance, Rogue Trader draws a lot of its power and interest from the fact that it’s based on a true story. In this case, the inspiration is Nick Leeson, a banker whose gambling habit ends up causing significant damage to the bank that employs him, leading to its bankruptcy. While critics didn’t love it at the time of its release, it nevertheless features a strong performance from Ewan McGregor, who once again shows that there’s almost no role that he can’t play convincingly.

The collapse of Enron was a major story in 2001, and it’s easy to see why. It was representative of titanic corporate malfeasance. A few years later, it got the documentary treatment in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which outlined in significant detail just how all of this occurred. It’s one of those documentaries that manages to be both quite informative and fiercely emotional, leaving the viewer with a sense of moral outrage that such a giant fraud could have been perpetrated in the first place.

Given just how devastating the 2008 financial crisis was, it has unsurprisingly given birth to a number of films which grapple with what happened and who was responsible. Too Big to Fail, for example, focuses primarily on the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the attempts by some in the government to stop the bleeding before catastrophe unfolds. The film skillfully blends drama with factual information and, as a result, it powerfully shines a light on one of the worst financial scandals of the 21st century.

Based on the novel of the same name by Michael Lewis, Adam McKay’s The Big Short  takes the financial crisis of 2008 as its subject, focusing on several characters whose actions helped to bring it about. It’s one of those rare films that manages to stay remarkably accurate to the facts of the case while also being eminently watchable. In large part, this is due to the very talented cast, including Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and numerous others. It’s a fictional film, but it still has much to teach the world about the dangers of unfettered capitalism.

Trading Places is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to its cast, including Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Don Ameche, and Ralph Bellamy. The latter two play a scheming pair of commodities brokers who use two men to conduct a bit of a social experiment. It’s a film that manages to be quite hilarious even as it ruthlessly pokes fun at the extent to which the wealthy and powerful think they have the right to play with other people’s lives.

Part horror and part satire, American Psycho is a scathing take-down of the hypermasculine fixations of America’s corporate class. Christian Bale is chilling and terrifying as Patrick Bateman, an investment banker who is as murderous as he is narcissistic. Even though it is about the 1980s, it is one of those films that is very much of the early 2000s, and, in its depiction of the darkness that can consume the male psyche, it has only become more relevant.