Hacker Cinema
Rogue Trader
1999 · Film · 101 min
Directed by James Dearden
Rogue Trader tells the true story of Nick Leeson, an employee of Barings Bank who--after a successful trading run--ends up accumulating $1.4 billion in losses hidden in account #88888.
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5 comments on Hacker News
Good movie about that with Obi Wan Kenobi starring in it, "Rogue Trader"
> tech bro... CEOs
Even in this headline, there's some pretty interesting equivocation happening between techies and CEOs overall. The article makes a decent case for why there's collective anxiety about tech companies, but neglects the question of "why only tech?"
The ~1990s had a whole string of movies with bankers and investors as villains: American Psycho, Rogue Trader, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wall Street, Boiler Room, and so on. Lately, we had had Wolf of Wallstreet and The Big Short, but in a post-2008 world where banking already has trashed the economy we're surprisingly short on bankers-as-villains films.
We got a couple of global warming films in the 2000s, and a couple more in the 2010s, but I can't think of one which makes a serious attempt to cast oil CEOs as villains - certainly not in the sense that e.g. tobacco companies have been. Avatar is probably the closest thing to "CEOs trashing the environment" that's been a hit.
Pharma companies lend themselves to human-interest tragedies, and we did get Dallas Buyer's Club. But there's no whole genre here like there used to be with "the bank takes the farm".
So there's the missing question: why tech companies specifically? The most obvious answer is just "more impressive visuals". I'm not sure we're talking about a particular anxiety of the moment, or if it's just that banks and oil companies work better on the page than on the screen.
Conversely, bad luck can play a big role in making you poor. For example, Nick Leeson singlehandedly brought down the world's second oldest merchant bank, Bearings Bank which was founded in 1762. Lesson was working in Singapore in a bank that was purchased by Bearings and was allowed to do rogue trading because the bank's controls weren't yet put in place in the subsidiary.
What brought everything down was Lesson placed a short straddle on the Tokyo and Singapore stock markets on January 16, 1995 betting there would not be significant market movement. The Kobe earthquake hit early in the morning the next day, Jan 17.
That was the beginning of the end.
Lesson did serve jail time, but published a book, Rogue Trader, and a major movie was made as well. Also a documentary.
There's a few films that deal with vaguely similar themes:
Rogue Trader: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131566/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_54
Cheaters: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218094/
Shattered Glass: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323944/?ref_=nv_sr_1
These are just 3 off the top of my head. There are probably other better films.
And Swordfish is a great movie about being a hacker... specifically the common recruiting process.
On a more serious note, I do agree with you. Some decent movies with a office environment/work theme: Boiler Room (2000), Duplicity (2009), Glengarry Glen Ross, Other People's Money (1991), Swimming with Sharks and Wall Street (1987).
I've also enjoyed the dramatized real-life stories in Rogue Trader and Barbarians at The Gate.