Who doesn’t like a great movie? Especially if it is a movie based on a true story.
Movies are our small escape, an adventure, our way out. With movies you get the chance to detach, experience something new, from someone else’s perspective. Especially with today’s technology, movies have showed us worlds we would’ve never imagined. But the best stories are always the ones that we know have happened. Below we have listed our picks for movies based on true stories that you should watch.
Wolf of Wall Street
Maybe the most inspirational movie based on a true story of our time. A black comedy based on the career of stock broker and founder of Stratton Oakmont, Jason Belfort. A hopeless and unemployed Belfort gets a job at a penny-stock exchange firm where he applies his natural, aggressive sales approach making a fortune. Later on establishing Stratton Oakmont, he becomes known as the Wolf of Wall Street and gets involved in criminal activity.
American Gangster
Based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina who used military planes returning from Vietnam to smuggle heroin into the United States. The movie portrays his rise to one of America’s largest drug importer and distributor, to his fall on the hands of detective Richie Roberts.
Pain & Gain
Although it is slightly exaggerated and ridiculously funny, the movie is based on the story published by Pete Collins in a series of Miami New Times articles 1999, and the book Pain & Gain: This is a True Story in 2013. It details the activity of a group of bodybuilders turned criminals after committing kidnapping, extortion, torture, and murder of several victims.
Bugsy
The movie follows notorious New York gangster Gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who worked for the New York mob. Bugsy moved to Los Angeles to oversee some mob business when he became romantically involved with Virginia Hill. What was thought to be one of Busy’s greatest schemes turned into what we know today as Las Vegas.
The Big Short
A comedy-drama based on the book of the same name, about the financial crisis of 2007-2008. When eccentric hedge fund manager Michael Burry discovered that the U.S. housing market is extremely unstable, he predicts that the market will collapse sometime in the second quarter of 2007. Realizing that he could profit from the crisis, he uses his clients money against their will to eventually make a 489% gain.
