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Movies that feel like Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010)

If you loved Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, the closest films we have are The Shadow's Edge (2025), Chernobyl: Abyss (2021) and Biutiful (2010). All three share Elite Squad: The Enemy Within's contemplative and wistful feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 9 of the 12 picks below are included with a subscription right now on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Paramount Plus Premium and others, checked against today's data.

After a bloody invasion of the BOPE in the High-Security Penitentiary Bangu 1 in Rio de Janeiro to control a rebellion of interns, the Lieutenant-Colonel Roberto Nascimento and the second in command Captain André Matias are accused by the Human Right Aids member Diogo Fraga of execution of prisoners. Matias is transferred to the corrupted Military Police and Nascimento is exonerated from the BOPE by the Governor.

🍅 91% Rotten Tomatoes8 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. José Padilhacontemplativekineticgrittywistful

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If Elite Squad: The Enemy Within hit the spot, these will too

Looking for the series itself? Also in this series: Elite Squad (2007)

The Shadow's Edge poster
The Shadow's Edge
2025 · dir. Larry Yang
🍅 82%7.1action · crime · drama

Common ground: nostalgic

The difference: Leans further into thriller

Macau Police brings the tracking expert police officer out of retirement to help catch a dangerous group of professional thieves.

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Chernobyl: Abyss poster
Chernobyl: Abyss
2021 · dir. Danila Kozlovsky
5.2drama · history · action

The same two preoccupations: affectation, and melancholy

The difference: Without the same grit

The aftermath of a shocking explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station made hundreds of people sacrifice their lives to clean up the site of the catastrophe and to successfully prevent an even bigger disaster that could have turned a large part of the European continent into an uninhabitable exclusion zone. This is their story.

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Biutiful poster
Biutiful
2010 · dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu
🍅 66%7.4drama

Both keep coming back to the same thing: nostalgic

The difference: Reviewed a good deal more coolly

This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who's sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.

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A Bronx Tale poster
A Bronx Tale
1993 · dir. Robert De Niro
🍅 97%7.8drama · crime

The same mix in both: stillness, then grit

The difference: Not nearly as kinetic

Set in the Bronx during the tumultuous 1960s, an adolescent boy is torn between his honest, working-class father and a violent yet charismatic crime boss. Complicating matters is the youngster's growing attraction - forbidden in his neighborhood - for a beautiful black girl.

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You Were Never Really Here poster
You Were Never Really Here
2017 · dir. Lynne Ramsay
🍅 89%6.7crime · drama · thriller

One thread runs through both: drugs

A traumatized veteran, unafraid of violence, tracks down missing girls for a living. When a job spins out of control, Joe's nightmares overtake him as a conspiracy is uncovered—leading to what may be his death trip or his awakening.

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The Straight Story poster
The Straight Story
1999 · dir. David Lynch
🍅 95%8drama · adventure

Both are built on the same subject: melancholy

Retired farmer and widower Alvin Straight learns one day that his estranged brother Lyle has suffered a severe stroke. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. He then has the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.

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Undisputed III: Redemption poster
Undisputed III: Redemption
2010 · dir. Isaac Florentine
7.4action · thriller · crime

The same preoccupation in both: jail

Russian inmate Boyka, now severely hobbled by the knee injury suffered at the end of Undisputed 2. No longer the feared prison fighter he was, he has declined so far that he is now good only for cleaning toilets. But when a new prison fight tournament begins - an international affair, matching the best fighters from prisons around the globe, enticing them with the promise of freedom for the winner - Boyka must reclaim his dignity and fight for his position in the tournament.

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Gomorrah poster
Gomorrah
2008 · dir. Matteo Garrone
🍅 90%7drama · crime

Common ground: criminal

An inside look at Italy's modern-day crime families, the Camorra in Naples and Caserta. Based on a book by Roberto Saviano. Power, money and blood: these are the "values" that the residents of the Province of Naples and Caserta have to face every day. They hardly ever have a choice and are forced to obey the rules of the Camorra. Only a lucky few can even think of leading a normal life.

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Like Father, Like Son poster
Like Father, Like Son
2013 · dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
🍅 86%7.8drama

Drama built on wistfulness, twice over

Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.

Feels alike?
Law of Tehran poster
Law of Tehran
2019 · dir. Saeed Roustaee
🍅 95%7.8action · crime · drama

Action with a pulse of momentum, in both cases

Samad is nobody’s fool. The narcotics officer has seen his share of a drug dealer’s lies and games, and his patience has come to run thin. While searching for the infamous drug baron Nasser Khakzad, he and his colleague Hamid scour the streets of Tehran, turning an overcrowded prison on its head. With his rough and dubious approach, Samad finally manages to find the criminal’s whereabouts – but things do not quite go according to plan...

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City of God poster
City of God
2002 · dir. Fernando Meirelles
🍅 91%8.6drama · crime

Both lean on stillness more than on 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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Brother 2 poster
Brother 2
2000 · dir. Aleksei Balabanov
7.6action · crime · drama

Kinetic drama in both cases

Arriving in Moscow, Chechen War veteran Danila meets Konstantin, an old friend who tells him that his twin brother has been forced into signing a crooked contract with a US ice hockey team. Soon after this meeting, Danila discovers Konstantin dead and he sets out to avenge his death; a journey that leads him to Chicago and a whole new experience.

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The best-reviewed films that share Elite Squad: The Enemy Within’s defining feeling.