Title: Boiler room
Duration: 120 min
Country: United Stated
Director: Ben Younger
Script: Ben Younger
Year: 2000
Synopsis: In this drama that explores greed and corruption in American business, Giovanni Ribisi plays Seth Davis, an intelligent and ambitious college dropout who runs a casino in his apartment. Eager to show his father that he can succeed, Seth lands a job with a small stock brokerage firm. He is given a space in the company's "boiler room," where he makes cold calls to prospective clients. As it turns out, Seth has a genuine talent for cold calling, which gains him the approval of his superiors, the admiration of his father, and the attention of one of his co-workers, Abby Hilliard (Nia Long). However, the higher up the ladder Seth rises, the deeper he sinks into a quagmire of dirty dealings, until he's breaking the law in order to keep his bosses happy and his paychecks coming.
'Banking and finance' in the film
One of the main scenes where you can see a banking and finance issue is when Seth, the main character, is still a trainee at J.T. Marlin, and he’s trying to sell some stocks to a doctor, and one of the senior brokers takes over the call, so he can show him how to close the deal. This way he shows him how to sell stocks of companies that don’t exist.
Another important scene is when Greg, the man that got Seth the interview for J.T. Marlin, explains briefly to him how being a broker works. He gives Seth a list of people that would be easy to defraud: male, 45, Mid-West, 150.000 $ monthly income, and most importantly, never a women.
Around the half of the film, we can see how Seth, while he’s still a trainee, closes his first stock sale for 10.000$.
Also, there’s a scene where Seth confess to one of his coworkers that what they’re doing at work is illegal, because Michael, the owner of the company, participates in the companies that are trying to go public (IPO), so there’s a conflict of interest, because he cannot manage an IPO and at the same time buy stocks of those companies.
Personal commentary
We didn’t particularly enjoy the film, just because it seems to imply that if you want to succeed as a broker, you have to scam people. It shows how people can get easy money in exchange of ripping off innocent people. That’s something we obviously don’t agree with, so as a film it is entertaining but, apart from that, we wouldn’t recommend it.
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