We asked brokers in a recent poll what movie best describes them and the insurance industry – and a few titles struck a few chords with readers.
Taking top spot in terms of votes was
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the tale of an enigmatic Boston real estate tycoon Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) who has a lucrative secret pastime: robbing banks. Not himself, of course; instead, he choreographs a team of five total strangers through the theft he has intricately timed and researched. Crown hardly needs the money; it's the rush he's after. On the hook for the stolen $2.6 million, the bank's insurance company sends investigator Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) to solve the case. She immediately suspects Crown and just as quickly falls for his charms. Or does she merely pretend to in hopes of landing her own fat payday? Ah, whom to trust?
Racking up the second highest number of votes was
Cedar Rapids (2011). In that movie, small-town Iowa insurance agent Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) winds up in
Hangover territory when he's dispatched to a regional insurance conference in the "metropolis" of Cedar Rapids. Lippe's assignment: Bring home the coveted Two Diamond award previously won by a senior partner who recently hanged himself. Insurance veterans Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly) and Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche) do the corrupting, but it's Lippe who clings to his principles and ultimately prevails, redeeming himself and the entire insurance profession.
Three movies share third spot:
The Apartment (1960) Lonely bachelor C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) works long days at a New York insurance company but spends longer nights pacing the streets of Manhattan while his superiors use his apartment for trysts.
Groundhog Day (1993) Misogynist TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) loathes his annual obligation to cover the emergence of Punxsutawney Phil from its Pennsylvania burrow every Groundhog Day. It is an old high school classmate of Connors, Ned ‘Needlenose’ Ryerson (Stephen Tobolowsky), who now sells insurance but remains the same twerp he was in school, badgering Connors with “remember when” stories.
The Rainmaker (1997) Newby Memphis, Tenn., lawyer Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon) and his streetwise partner Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito) take on Great Benefit Insurance over a denied claim for a bone marrow transplant on a 22-year-old man dying of leukemia.
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Did you miss our last poll? Here are the
10 movies that readers could choose from.
