If you’ve been trying to find a movie like The Wolf Of Wall Street but haven’t had any success, we suggest you read this list of similar movies.
Based on a true story, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), is an underpaid junior broker that seeks money and power. He teams up with Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), and together they are starting a brokerage firm named Stratton Oakmont. Quickly the company gets bigger and bigger, and they gain status in the trading community. With the big money comes lots of drugs, and their schemes even grow bigger.
This is a list of 12 movies that share the same characteristics as The Wolf Of Wall Street in the sense that they all tell the story of very ambitious men who would stop at nothing to get rich. An early example of this type of film is Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), but they have begun to flourish in the decade since the economic crisis that began in 2007. Movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, are all about greedy individuals who take on the system.
Movies Similar To The Wolf Of Wall Street
1 / 12. Inception (2010)
DiCaprio does the same magician work in The Wolf Of Wall Street. I believe it’s one of his best movies.
Inception is a creative paraphrase statement on robbery, and sting operations, in addition to a properly constructed romantic subplot and puzzling action scenes.
Watching Inception is like staring at several movies at the same time. The intricate maze-like structure of the film puts the viewer’s brain into hyperventilation from which you will have a hard time recovering.
What’s more, Leonardo DiCaprio makes a mesmerizing appearance of a charismatic man who turns the human mind into a porridge while he himself does so to his viewers, planting in their heads while talking about planting ideas, and endless loops.
The film tells the story of Dominick Cobb who steals information from peoples’ minds by invading their dreams. He is on a constant run from the law, and can not visit his kids who he misses very much. One day, Cobb gets a tempting offer – he is being asked to do an “Inception” – instead of pulling information from someone’s mind, he will have to implement information.
It is a very complicated procedure, but the man offering him the deal says that if Cobb succeeds, he will get to see his kids. Cobb is preparing for the mission and teams up with a group of experts, but along the way, he doesn’t tell his team the whole truth.
2 / 12. The Big Short (2015)
Michael Burry (Christian Bale), Is a Wall Street expert. During 2008, before the US economic crisis, Burry realizes that the mortgage market is unstable and a number of subprime home loans are at risk of default. Burry takes advantage of the situation and bets against the real estate market by throwing more than a million-dollar on behalf of his investors into credit default swaps, his actions drawing the attention of opportunists, including hedge fund specialist Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and retired former broker (Brad Pitt), together they are making a fortune from the American economic crisis.
An intelligent and fascinating film that reminds us not to give the systems that run our lives to be taken for granted and always but always be skeptical and ask questions.
3 / 12. Moneyball (2011)
American writer Michael Lewis has become one of the best storytellers in the financial world. In 1986, when he was only 26 years old, Lewis wrote his debut book, Liar’s Poker book, which changed the face of Wall Street. Twenty-four years later, he published best-selling books that deal with people who made money from the subprime crisis in the United States in 2008. The most prominent of these is Moneyball, which was later adapted into a movie.
Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), is the director of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. Following a lost game and the departure of three of the team’s stars, Beane asks the team’s owners for an increased budget for next year but gets a denial.
During a meeting with the Cleveland Indians team manager, Beane is impressed by Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a freshman graduate who rejects Beane’s attempts to trade a player.
Beane learned that Brand is using advanced statistical tools, contrary to the policy in the league, which prevents a proper assessment of the player’s effectiveness in terms of their contribution to victories and about their salaries.
Beane decides to hire Brand as his assistant, and as part of the preparations for the new season, Beane and Brand focus on several players who seem to not get enough appreciation, including the oldest player David Justice (Stephen Bishop), who dropped out of the Yankees. As the season starts, the team suffers a series of failures and Beane has to deal with the team’s coach, who refuses to adjust to Beanes’ new approach.
If you’re searching for movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, then Moneyball should be on your top watch list.
4/12. The Banker (2020)
A film that shows what it’s like to come from nothing and struggle with prejudice and self-doubt. It is reminiscent of crime comedies.
Set in the USA in the year 1954, Bernard Garrett (Anthony Mackie), an Afro-American man, wants to get into the real estate business but encounters racism that prevents him from being a successful real estate investor.
After an encounter with a wealthy club owner – Joe Morris (Samuel L. Jackson), he convinces Joe to be his partner. Together, they persuade Matt Steiner (Nicholas Hoult) to pretend to be the company’s owner at meetings to facilitate sales.
They end up being a very successful real estate firm in Los Angeles, with the two teachings Matt the basics of investing in real estate.
Following their success, Garrett turns his attention to being the owner of a local bank in his hometown, Willis, Texas, and giving loans to residents. He manages to buy the Bank but gains a lot of suspicion from the local community.
5 / 12. Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Another movie is based on a true story and stars DiCaprio. It shows, again, that reality surpasses all imagination. Spielberg was able to take the true story and give it the Hollywood glamor it deserves, whether it be using beautiful and respected actors (DiCaprio, Hanks, Walken), the multiplicity of filming locations (across many countries in the United States, France, and more) or an accurate reconstruction of a more innocent and beautiful period.
The amazing and true story of Frank Abgeniel, a teenage crook who swaps identities like socks, wastes millions and drives the FBI crazy. He became the most successful bank robber in U.S. history before the age of 17.
Tom Hanks plays an investigator trying to stop him. He sets the ultimate goal of catching Frank and prosecuting him, but Frank is always one step ahead of him, enticing him to continue playing the cat-and-mouse game they play.
6 / 12. War Dogs (2016)
Based on a true story – two ambitious but uneducated young men, childhood best friends (Jonah Hill, Miles Teller), turn into arms dealers in Miami. They manage to take advantage of a government initiative that allows small businesses to access tender contracts for the United States military during the Iraq war.
The two, who started as underpaid workers, start living the good life and then win, much to their surprise and almost by mistake, a coveted three hundred million Pentagon tender to arm the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
A movie with many dubious characters, it reveals sad truths behind the arms industry and raises a lot of moral questions.
7 / 12. American Hustle (2013)
American Hustle is based on a secret FBI operation from the 1970s. Christian Bale is a crook named Irving Rosenfeld. He is forced to work for a wild FBI agent (Bradley Cooper), along with a seductive British partner. By impersonating businessmen, the two enter a world of crime, and gambling and manage to indict key corrupt people in New Jersey.
It resembles Scorsese’s film in the sense that it is packed with unusual fun and colorful characters. It plays the border between drama and comedy, with an excellent cast.
8 / 12. American Made (2017)
Genre: Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime, Drama
Movie Duration:115 min
Barry Seal was a civilian airline pilot until the day he received an offer to work for the U.S. government as an undercover CIA agent. His original job was to impersonate a drug lord in the Colombian Dayan cartel, smuggle weapons and drugs by plane into U.S. territory, gain their trust and eventually take down the cartel.
Barry soon discovers the taste of money and begins to play a double and triple game and profit from each of the parties he works with, but slowly – the risk increases, and the rope around his neck tightens.
American Made is based on the true story of, and it operates in the format of a feverish biography, in which the protagonist is discovered as an unreliable narrator.
The movie is saturated with a dominant comic tone and a kind of perverse empathy toward the con artists.
9/12. Margin Call (2011)
The Wolf Of Wall Street is all about smart powerful people who become aware of their inability to control their lives. They are soldiers on the chessboard of capitalism, and their downfall is only a matter of time. Likewise, Margin Call does manage to provoke the same notion.
J.C. Chandor’s film is full of people who think they have control over their lives, but they discover it’s only an illusion.
The story centers on Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), who is a rocket scientist who has to make a living and therefore works on Wall Street. One day surprisingly and unexpectedly, his boss (Stanley Tucci) is fired, and Just before he leaves the building, he hands Peter a disk-on-key with information that will change Peter’s life.
From the information given, Peter reveals a stock scandal that will eliminate his organization and harm the global economy, in an unprecedented way.
10/12. Boiler Room (2000)
Ben Younger’s movie tells the story of a corrupted broker company filled with masculine, hysterical, and competitive men in which there is (almost) no foothold for women.
Ben Affleck wounds up giving an impressive guest role as one of the company’s blunt and arrogant executives.
Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi), is a young man who drops out of college and runs an illegal casino in his student apartment. When his judge’s father (Ron Rifkin) finds out about the Casino his son is running, he is shocked and furious.
To please his father, Seth finds a decent job as a broker in a small company. Not long after he joins the company, he finds out that the firm he is working for is so successful because it deals with financial scams and destroys the lives of innocent people.
Seth will soon have to decide how he will handle the truth he just revealed. I guess you can guess how the plot unfolds.
11/12. The Firm (1993)
Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise), is a Harvard University Law grad with multiple offers from big law firms in major cities in the US, finally, he decides on a small but wealthy firm from Memphis Tennessee.
Two weeks after Mitch joins the firm, two of his colleagues are killed when their boat blows up under suspicious circumstances. When The FBI approaches him, Mitch finds out that the law firm he is working for is heavily involved with a mob family.
Mitch is now going to risk his life and his law career and set a plan to expose the corrupted, criminal behavior of the firm’s lawyers, while he lives under the threat of being exposed by the firm management.
Whoever says that there are no good movies on Netflix is wrong. The old movies are real treasures. It’s a classic 90s movie with lots of thought invested in the script and a lot of stars before we became stars.
Very similar in the sense of conning and corrupted people, better in my opinion than the usual movies in this genre.
12/12. The Devil’s Advocate (1997)
Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves), is a brilliant lawyer who works in a small town in Florida. He has not lost a single lawsuit. He is invited to join a law firm in New York City, managed by John Milton (Al Pacino), a veteran attorney, who heads a huge and very lucrative international firm.
Milton invites Lomax to make big money and become a big-shot lawyer. When Lomax and his wife (Charlize Theron) accept the offer and move to New York, a disturbing picture slowly emerges and raises many questions about the purity of Milton’s intentions and his hidden motives.
A suspenseful film with a slightly strange plot. At first, It gives you the feeling of another movie about a moral man who became completely corrupted when rose to greatness. But, the story has much more philosophical depth that is revealed in the end.
