If you liked “War Dogs,” you probably like realistic, funny, and intense movies with themes like corruption, arms dealer, smuggling, friendship, gunrunner, rise and fall, and the military that were shot in the USA or Romania.
The movies on the list are ordered by how much they like each other. The recommendation engine chose realistic, dramatic, suspenseful, and interesting movies with plots about corruption, mentor, betrayal, dialogue, greed, running away, and stories, most of which were in the Drama, Crime, and Biography genres. Some movies like War Dogs:
- Catch Me If You Can (2002)
- Lord of War (2005)
- The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
- The Big Short (2015)
- American Made (2017)
The matching qualities are shown in bold.
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Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Catch Me If You Can is an American biographical crime comedy-drama movie from 2002. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, and Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Nathalie Baye, Amy Adams, and James Brolin play supporting roles. The movie was directed and produced by Steven Spielberg.
Jeff Nathanson’s screenplay is based on Frank Abagnale’s “autobiography.” Abagnale says that before he turned 19, he pulled off scams worth millions of dollars by pretending to be a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. His story doesn’t seem to be true.
After Abagnale’s book with the same name came out in 1980, there was talk of making it into a movie. However, it wasn’t until 1997, when Spielberg’s DreamWorks bought the film rights, that the project really got going. Before Spielberg decided to direct the movie himself, David Fincher, Gore Verbinski, Lasse Hallstrom, Milo Forman, and Cameron Crowe were all considered. From February to May 2002, the movie was shot.
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Lord of War (2005)
Lord of War is an American crime drama movie that came out in 2005. It was written, produced, and directed by Andrew Niccol. Nicolas Cage co-produced the movie and also starred in it. On September 16, 2005, the movie came out in the United States. It got good reviews and made $72.6 million at the box office.
The story of real-life arms dealers and smugglers, especially Viktor Bout, inspired Cage’s role as a fictional illegal arms dealer. Amnesty International, a human rights group, backed the movie because it brought attention to the issue of illegal arms trafficking by the international arms industry.
The movie made $9,390,144 in its first weekend, making it the third most popular movie in North America after Just Like Heaven and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. After 7 weeks on the market, the movie made a total of $24,149,632 in the US and Canada and $48,467,436 abroad, for a total of $72,617,068 around the world.
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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street is an epic biographical black comedy crime film from 2013 that was written by Terence Winter and based on Jordan Belfort’s 2007 memoir of the same name. It was directed by Martin Scorsese. It tells about Belfort’s life as a stockbroker in New York City and how his firm, Stratton Oakmont, was involved in a lot of fraud and corruption on Wall Street, which led to his downfall.
Belfort is played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who also produced the movie. Jonah Hill plays his friend and business partner Donnie Azoff, Margot Robbie plays his wife Naomi Lapaglia, and Kyle Chandler plays FBI agent Patrick Denham, who tries to catch Belfort.
In 2007, DiCaprio and Warner Bros. bought the rights to Belfort’s memoir, and Scorsese was set to direct, but production was put on hold because of rules about what could be in the book. Red Granite Pictures, an independent production company, gave the project the go-ahead after that. Most of the filming was done on film stock and took place in New York City at the end of 2012.
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The Big Short (2015)
The Big Short is an American comedy-drama about real life that came out in 2015. It was directed by Adam McKay. It was written by McKay and Charles Randolph and is based on Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, which came out in 2010.
It shows how the US housing bubble caused the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt are the main actors in the movie. John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, and Marisa Tomei also have small parts.
The film is well-known for the unusual ways it shows how financial instruments work. It has cameos from people like actress Margot Robbie, chef Anthony Bourdain, singer-songwriter Selena Gomez, and economist Richard Thaler, who break the fourth wall to explain things like subprime mortgages and synthetic collateralized debt obligations.
The Big Short was first shown in a small number of theatres in the United States on December 11, 2015. On December 23, Paramount Pictures showed the movie to more people. The movie made $133 million on a $50 million budget. It was well-reviewed and did well at the box office.
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American Made (2017)
American Made is an action comedy movie from 2017 that stars Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Alejandro Edda, Mauricio Meja, Caleb Landry Jones, and Jesse Plemons. It was directed by Doug Liman and written by Gary Spinelli.
It is based on the life of Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who flew missions for the CIA and later worked for the Medelln Cartel to bring drugs into Colombia. Seal worked for the DEA as a spy so he wouldn’t have to go to jail.
The movie first came out on August 18, 2017, in Taiwan. On September 29, 2017, it came out in the United States. It is the first movie directed by Liman that Universal Pictures has put out since The Bourne Identity in 2002. Some theatres showed it in 2D and IMAX. It made $134 million worldwide on a budget of about $50 million, and most critics liked it. Cruise’s performance was especially praised.
