Movies like Elite Squad
Elite Squad (2007) is a action movie directed by José Padilha. The list below collects the movies that people who loved it enjoyed most, best known first.
1. Training Day (2001)
★ 7.5 · 6,920 votes · Action, Crime, Drama
On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop works with a rogue detective who isn't what he appears.
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2. City of God (2002)
★ 8.4 · 8,521 votes · Drama, Crime
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.
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3. American Gangster (2007)
★ 7.6 · 6,301 votes · Drama, Crime
Loosely based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina, who smuggled heroin into the United States on American service planes returning from the Vietnam War, before being detained by a task force led by Newark Detective Richie Roberts.
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4. Blow (2001)
★ 7.4 · 4,716 votes · Crime, Drama
The story of how George Jung, together with the Medellín Cartel led by Pablo Escobar, established the billion-dollar cocaine empire in the United States in the 1970s.
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5. Traffic (2000)
★ 7.1 · 2,525 votes · Thriller, Drama, Crime
An exploration of the United States of America's war on drugs from multiple perspectives. For the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the war becomes personal when he discovers his well-educated daughter is abusing cocaine within their comfortable suburban home. In Mexico, a flawed, but noble policeman agrees to testify against a powerful general in league with a cartel, and in San Diego, a drug kingpin's sheltered trophy wife must learn her husband's ruthless business after he is arrested, endangering her luxurious lifestyle.
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6. White Boy Rick (2018)
★ 6.4 · 1,243 votes · Crime, Drama
The story of Richard Wershe Jr., a teenager who became an undercover informant for the police during the 1980s, and was ultimately arrested for drug trafficking and sentenced to life in prison.
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7. First Blood (1982)
★ 7.5 · 7,167 votes · Action, Thriller, Drama
When former Green Beret John Rambo is harassed by local law enforcement and arrested for vagrancy, he is forced to flee into the mountains and wage an escalating one-man war against his pursuers.
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8. The Equalizer 3 (2023)
★ 7.3 · 3,971 votes · Action, Thriller, Crime
Robert McCall finds himself at home in Southern Italy but he discovers his friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends' protector by taking on the mafia.
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9. Year of the Dragon (1985)
★ 6.8 · 512 votes · Action, Crime, Thriller
In New York, racist Capt. Stanley White becomes obsessed with destroying a Chinese-American drug ring run by Joey Tai, an up-and-coming young gangster as ambitious as he is ruthless. While pursuing an unauthorized investigation, White grows increasingly willing to violate police protocol, resorting to progressively violent measures -- even as his concerned wife, Connie, and his superiors beg him to consider the consequences of his actions.
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10. The Principal (1987)
★ 6.4 · 320 votes · Action, Adventure, Crime
Burglary. Drugs. Assault. Rape. The students at Brandel High are more than new Principal Rick Latimer bargained for. Gangs fight to control the school using knives - even guns - when they have to. When Latimer and the head of security try to clean up the school and stop the narcotics trade, they run up against a teenage mafia. A violent confrontation on the campus leads to a deadly showdown with the drug dealer's gang, and one last chance for Latimer to save his career... and his life.
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11. Veronica Guerin (2003)
★ 6.7 · 352 votes · Drama, Crime, Thriller
In this true story, Veronica Guerin is an investigative reporter for an Irish newspaper. As the drug trade begins to bleed into the mainstream, Guerin decides to take on and expose those responsible. Beginning at the bottom with addicts, Guerin then gets in touch with John Traynor, a paranoid informant. Not without some prodding, Traynor leads her to John Gilligan, the ruthless head of the operation, who does not take kindly to Guerin's nosing.
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12. Black and Blue (2019)
★ 6.8 · 1,010 votes · Action, Thriller, Crime
Rookie cop Alicia West, an Army veteran, inadvertently captures the murder of a young drug dealer on her body cam. After realizing that the murder was committed by corrupt cops, she teams up with the one person from her community who is willing to help her as she tries to escape both the criminals out for revenge and the police who are desperate to destroy the incriminating footage.
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13. Havoc (2025)
★ 6.4 · 1,357 votes · Action, Crime, Thriller
When a drug heist swerves lethally out of control, a jaded cop fights his way through a corrupt city's criminal underworld to save a politician's son.
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14. The Killer (2024)
★ 6.3 · 633 votes · Action, Thriller, Crime
Zee is a feared contract killer known as "the Queen of the Dead," but when she refuses to murder a young blind woman, she finds herself hunted both by criminal colleagues and a determined police detective.
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