What about Rogue Trader???

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131566/

Ambitious, wide-boy Nick Leeson (Ewan McGregor) is determined to rise in the world and be more than a simple bank clerk. When his employers, Barings Bank, offer him the opportunity to go to Jakarta to sort out a problem that nobody else wants, he seizes the opportunity with both hands. To save money the bank allows Nick to operate both the floor trading and the back office facilities and force him to employ cheap, unskilled staff. His first year of trading is a big success and he makes large profits for the bank even though he has illegally broken trading rules and secretly covered up losses. Given more freedom, even more money and continuing unchecked, Nick starts to make losses and again attempts to trade out of them but this time he comes unstuck as his illegal trading generates even bigger losses

What about 'Barbarians at the Gate' with James Garner? Classic movie adapted from the book.

You missed the classic Glen Gary Glen Ross. Remember coffee is for closers. Also you should check out Vince Vaughn in the Prime Gig. It's more about telemarketing then the stock market per se, but anyone who's ever had to do any cold calling will appreciate the movie.

BLASPHEMY! Ya'll forgot startup.com -- no other movie captures the tech bubble zeitgeist like this film, which is really about some Goldman banker dumb enough to leave his job in hope of scoring well with the e-commerce gods.

A-B-C. always be closing. I don't think I'd classify that as a wall street movie per se... even though it is one of the great ones... boiler room!?? quite possibly one of the worst ones...

someone erroneously writes:

A-B-C. always be closing. I don't think I'd classify that as a wall street movie per se....

I think that quote is from Glengarry Glen Ross, which is about real estate salesmen. So that guy was correct.

Regardless, real life characters are much more entertaining than hollywood stories about wall street.

J: boiler room was a long island movie, i guess, not a wall street one:

"if i have to sit in one more bar in queens and watch some housewife puffing on a newport i'm gonna kill myself."

Ooh I forgot about dealers with Rebecca DeMornay in shoulder pads. When I was a kid I learned from this movie that traders have jets and live on islands.

Excellent call on Rogue Trader by anonymous.

I'd like to submit the as-yet-unmade Enron made-for-TV movie. Chris Cooper should definitely be cast as Skilling, and I think Burt Reynolds might be alright as Lay. Also... Jeremy Irons as Fastow?

fairest writes:

J: boiler room was a long island movie, i guess, not a wall street one...

I was gonna say rogue trader,.... but also "The Bank". Cool, aussie flick about a quant.

Bro, Wall Street is a physical location. A rather boring one, but still. There's men with AK47s down there, there's an Equinox health club that looks like a dance club. There's a Starbucks that smells like rat poison on the corner of William and Wall. There's a bunch of louche traders smoking blunts with DHL carriers, you can have a $22 hamburger at JP Morgan's old "pad", etc.

You can get there by the 4 or 5 or 2 or 3 or J or M or Z or X90 or you can take a company car like most of us do.

What you mean to say is: capitalism is a mentality, which you'd be correct about, though it's not an innovative thing to say.

Or you mean to say "wall street" as an example of metonymy or synecdoche (one of those things, I think the latter) like calling the president the "white house" or calling jessica simpson "the breasts", but that's way beyond the scope of the comments section of a fun financial gossip site, and doesn't change the fact the line about housewives smoking newports in Queens is funny.

latte drinker writes:

There's a Starbucks that smells like rat poison on the corner of William and Wall....

What? No The Secret of My Success? That's the movie that shows upwardly mobile men suffering from Napoleon complexes how to land tall, icy blondes for their first wives.

Also you should check out Vince Vaughn in the Prime Gig. It's more about telemarketing then the stock market per se, but anyone who's ever had to do any cold calling will appreciate the movie.......

PRIME GIG gets a C+ in my opinion: a goddamn movie about closing should at least end with some closure -- we have no idea what the underlying purport of the film is, and what the heck happens at the end.

Sales and deconstruction = bad mix.

Other than that, there are some pretty hot sex scenes in this movie you'd be plain dumb to pass up on....

the one on astor (both of them) does not smell worse than the one on wall, but both smell pretty bad. i think the reason the one on wall smells so rancid is because it's attached to a deli. but all starbucks smell unless they're in the suburbs, really. kinda like people.

danny i like the ticker stream on your site, it reminds me of "pi" -- does pi classify as a wall street movie?

danny i like the ticker stream on your site, it reminds me of "pi" -- does pi classify as a wall street movie?

The correlation between addiction, drugs, and Wall Street hasn't been sufficiently studied. I'm not talking about 8 balls, either -- I'm talking about the modern day stock junky, such as myself, someone who needs Prozac just because the markets are closed...

David Denby tried a couple of years ago with his so-so book, but the opus on stock addiction remains to be written...

Wall Street needs a Flaubert, a Walter Benjamin -- someone who can capture the toxicity of the Street and relay its message to us fiends, those hooked to the tape. The Dow is our God....