The topic of insurance has provided some amazing movies. Anytime you combine risk, accidents, and money you have the possibility of something interesting happening. Or, have a character languish behind the desk of a highly predictable job for 30 years suddenly retiring or reinventing him/herself, and you've got enough tension for a dramatic story.
Don't believe me? Check out these movies below--you'll be stupefied:
About Schmidt (2002): Watch Jack Nicholson play Warren Schmidt, a retired insurance agent who has led a safe, predictable life—until he buys an RV and takes a risk-ridden ride to attend his daughter’s wedding. A great movie not only about insurance, but the frailties and complexities of life. IMDB Rating: 7.2
Death of a Salesman (1985): Starring a young Dustin Hoffman and a very young John Malkovich. Based on the Arthur Miller classic about a traveling insurance salesman, Willy Lowman, going through a mental degeneration. A number of disappointments lead to a tragic car accident and left insurance money for his son Biff’s misconstrued business. IMDB Rating: 7.3
The Truman Show (1998): Jim Carey stars as an insurance salesman/adjuster who discovers that his entire life is actually a TV show. This movie tied to insurance is a striking play on the appearance/reality tension in our daily lives, especially with the rise of social media and the phenomenon of reality TV.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
Cedar Rapids (2011): A small-town Iowa insurance agent, Tim Lippe, is dispatched to a regional insurance conference in ‘hicksville’ Cedar Rapids. His mission: Bring home the much-coveted Two Diamond award. It’s a regaling story about corruption and the pursuit of virtue. IMDB Rating: 6.3
Sicko (2007): Documentarian and libertarian political pundit, Michael Moore’s documentary on the ills of US health insurance, and those sufferers under its penurious policies. Makes one thank God for Canadian healthcare. While Moore remains contentious figure, this movie is a stunner, and will certainly not bore you. IMDB Rating: 6.3
The Rainmaker (1997): Starring Danny DeVito, Matt Damon, and Claire Danes. The film is about an idealistic lawyer and his cynical partner who take on a powerful law firm representing a corrupt insurance company. If you thought insurance could make for a boring film, think again. And did I mention it's based on a John Grisham classic?
IMDB Rating: 7.0
The Incredibles (2004): Bob Parr (aka Mr. Incredible) plays an insurance agent before losing his job for assaulting his boss at the fictional Insuricare. His firing is the catalyst for his transformation as a superhero. For those of us languishing in jobs we don't like, or living someone else's dream--regardless of being in the insurance industry or not--this one's for you. Really, the title says it all--doesn't it?
IMDB Rating 8.0
Owning Mahowny (2003): Starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and Minnie Driver, it is a film not about the insurance industry per se, but about risk. Hoffman’s character, a bank manager, has both a gambling addiction and access to a multimillion dollar account that he uses to fuel a series of regaling and clandestine gambling episodes. It’s based on the story of the largest one-man bank fraud in Canadian history.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
A Little Trip to Heaven (2005): Starring Forest Whitaker and Julia Stiles, this film is wrapped around a husband and wife’s tangle with an investigator over her dead brother’s million-dollar insurance policy. Fact or fraud? Whitaker is a brilliant actor, and whenever you have dead bodies and insurance money, things just naturally get interesting.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
Along Came Polly (2004): A hilarious romantic comedy starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston (along with brilliant performances by Alec Baldwin and Philip Seymour Hoffman). Stiller plays a risk-assessor for an insurance company, who, in attempting to live a risk-free life, winds up with Aniston whose life is anything but predictable.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
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