Fair Play is a delicious blend of erotic thrills and money-hungry characters on Wall Street. Phoebe Dynevor (Bridgerton) and Alden Ehrenreich (Oppenheimer) play hard-drinking hedge-fund analysts who are secretly dating whenever they’re not sweating through their suits in their high-pressure work environment. It’s dark, sexy, sometimes humorous content — and don’t get us started on that killer ending sequence. Indeed, what makes Fair Play worthy of watching is in ever-shifting dynamics between Dynevor’s Emily and Ehrenreich’s Luke.
We’ve seen these film components over the decades across many films and genres. From the thrills of Gone Girl and Black Swan to the coporate politics of The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, we’ve compiled a list of classics for fans of the Netflix film to consume next. Here are 10 movies like Fair Play that are worth checking out.
10 Gone Girl (2014)
It’s exciting to know that David Fincher’s The Killer has hit the masses. Between that and Fair Play, Gone Girl is certainly worth a revisit. Based on the acclaimed novel by Gillian Flynn, who also wrote the screenplay, the film takes place in Missouri, where former NY-based writer Nick (Ben Affleck) and wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) live a seemingly peaceful existence — that is, until Amy goes missing, and Nick becomes the prime suspect in the case. A nightmarish media blitz soon unravels the couple’s hidden lives, ultimately leading to betrayal, lies, murder and more.
How It’s Like Fair Play
Gone Girl and Fair Play are similar thanks to tone, the erotic-thriller genre they can both fall into, plus quick-witted characters and female personas outsmarting the males. “Girl power,” as the Spice Girls once said.
Stream on Max
9 Malcolm & Marie (2021)
Before the acclaimed second season of Euphoria was released, writer/director Sam Levinson teamed up with Zendaya and John David Washington for a monochrome meltdown of emotions in Malcolm & Marie, an often hard-to-watch depiction of a modern couple in Hollywood. Playing out in real time during a night following a film premiere, the couple starts to bicker about their careers, true love and more.
How It’s Like Fair Play
Malcolm & Marie and Fair Play are both erotic in nature and involve a central woman protagonist rightfully having the upper hand against their verbally abusive male counterparts. In both films, at first we think it’s the guy who will soak up any sort of power and appreciation across the storyline, but then we realize we had it wrong all along.
Stream on Netflix
8 Black Swan (2010)
Darren Aronofsky’s gritty masterpiece, Black Swan centers on Nina (Natalie Portman), an ambitious young ballerina who takes on the lead role of an opening production of Swan Lake, despite the anxiety-inducing competition of newcomer Lily (Mila Kunis). Nina can do White Swan, while femme fatale Lily is seemingly a master of the Black, as their unnerving director (Vincent Cassel) keeps reiterating. A terrifying rivalry ensues, and Nina’s mental health is pushed to the brink.
How It’s Like Fair Play
Black Swan and Fair Play both share the components of toxic masculinity, eroticism, psychological thrills and a strong female protagonist doing whatever it takes to achieve her career dream or goal.
Rent on Prime Video
7 Revolutionary Road (2008)
Sam Mendes’ roller-coaster of a relationship drama, Revolutionary Road, follows Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (played by Kate Winslet) navigating the expected norms of suburban Connecticut life. Then they decide to rebel and commit to moving to Paris on a whim, which unnerves the neighbors around them. Featuring acclaimed supporting turns by Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, and David Harbour, Revolutionary Road is a can’t miss for actors in training.
How It’s Like Fair Play
Revolutionary Road and Fair Play both center on loving relationships in utter turmoil as they try to navigate a high-pressure society. Neither film has a happy conclusion, with true love ending in destructive ways.
Stream on Max
6 Michael Clayton (2007)
George Clooney nails the titular role in Michael Clayton, a “fixer” at the corporate law firm who takes care of his employer’s dirty work. Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career when one of the firm’s attorneys (Tom Wilkinson) has a mental breakdown during a class-action lawsuit that means everything to partners Clayton bows down to. Featuring an Oscar-winning performance by Tilda Swinton playing a villainous lawyer on the other side of the case, Michael Clayton should be revisited by Andor fans, since Tony Gilroy helmed both projects.
How It’s Like Fair Play
Michael Clayton and Fair Play are dark, sterile, suspenseful thrillers about high-brow businessmen and women, and the dangerous secrets that lurk in their private lives. What are your colleagues hiding? What lengths would you go to, in order to please your boss? They also share the component of principal characters who are guilt-ridden for a variety of reasons.
Rent on AppleTV
5 The Ides of March (2011)
In The Ides of March, Clooney plays Gov. Mike Morris, whose campaign seems like a future success story thanks to his ambitious press secretary Stephen (Ryan Gosling). But after word gets out that Stephen takes both a meeting with Morris’ opponent’s campaign manager (played by Paul Giamatti) and an interest in one of Morris’ young interns (Evan Rachel Wood), a series of heart-pounding events unfold that collectively threaten Morris’ chances at winning his next election.
How It’s Like Fair Play
The Ides of March and Fair Play both involve the scandalous private lives of high-brow businesspeople getting exposed after secrets start bleeding into the workplace. Talk about “toxic work environment” when we see characters played by Gosling and Dynevor get screamed at during certain scenes in their respective films.
Rent on AppleTV
4 Wall Street (1987)
There was an inferior sequel years later, but the original Wall Street takes place amid the New York Stock Exchange in ’80s, where stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) does whatever he can to brush shoulders with the head honchos like Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Gekko ends up showing Fox the ropes when it comes to insider trading. Their dangerous scheming ultimately threatens the livelihood of Fox’s dad (Martin Sheen, Charlie’s real-life father), leaving Fox in the ultimate Wall Street pickle.
How It’s Like Fair Play
Wall Street and Fair Play both involve power-hungry stockbrokers who explore the daring possibilities of insider trading. “It’s basically public knowledge,” Ehrenreich tells his secret fiancee at one point during his Netflix film. That couldn’t end well…
Stream on Paramount+
3 American Psycho (2000)
American Psycho is set in the year 1987, where the now-infamous “mergers and acquisitions” businesman Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) secretly moonlights as a sexually charged serial killer. No, he’s not out “returning videotapes” every night. Willem Dafoe plays the detective investigating the crimes, while Reese Witherspoon plays his perpetually disappointed fiancee. And it’s Bateman’s well-meaning but nosy secretary (Chloë Sevigny) who might just expose Bateman once and for all.
How It’s Like Fair Play
American Psycho and Fair Play both involve successful NYC businesspeople as central characters who also possess double lives as sexually ravenous and sometimes violent individuals.
Stream on Peacock
2 The Big Short (2015)
Adam McKay’s black-comedy masterpiece centers on the housing-market collapse in 2008, when Wall Street guru Michael Burry (Bale) bets against the housing market, a bold strategy that draws the attention of banker Jared Vennett (Gosling), hedge-fund wiz Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and more. Featuring a plethora of A-list celebs playing themselves, The Big Short becomes a unique hybrid film that paved the way for future similarly-toned projects.
How It’s Like Fair Play
The Big Short and Fair Play involve sharp-tongued, sharp-witted businesspeople who have the last laugh on society, seemingly able to predict where the stock market is headed before their peers — and the rest of the world, for that matter.
Stream on Paramount+
1 The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Martin Scorsese has kept busy in the last decade, dating back to his 2013 crowdpleaser, The Wolf of Wall Street, about Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), who takes the NY Stock Exchange by storm starting in his early-20s in the late-80s. Together with his drug-loving right-hand man (Jonah Hill) and similarly inclined group of degenerate brokers, Belfort makes millions by scheming naive investors out of millions. But “Karma is a b****,” as they say, as the feds ultimately come after his gang, with an FBI investigator played to perfection by Kyle Chandler.
How It’s Like Fair Play
The Wolf of Wall Street and Fair Play both center on hard-partying stockbrokers who are sometimes blind with ambition, thereby leading to dangerous mistakes that could cost them their careers and more.
Stream on Netflix
This story originally appeared on Movieweb