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Movies that feel like Get Carter (1971)

If you loved Get Carter, the closest films we have are Body Heat (1981), The Narrow Margin (1952) and Thief (1981). All three share Get Carter's gritty and tense feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 7 of the 12 picks below are included with a subscription right now on TCM, YouTube TV and Amazon Prime Video and others, checked against today's data.

Jack Carter is a small-time hood working in London. When word reaches him of his brother's death, he travels to Newcastle to attend the funeral. Refusing to accept the police report of suicide, Carter seeks out his brother’s friends and acquaintances to learn who murdered his sibling and why.

🍅 85% Rotten Tomatoes7.3 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Mike Hodgesgrittytensemelancholyromanticatmospheric

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If Get Carter hit the spot, these will too

Looking for the series itself? Also in this series: John Carter (2012)

Body Heat poster
Body Heat
1981 · dir. Lawrence Kasdan
🍅 96%7.4thriller · crime

Both keep circling back to neo-noir

The difference: Not nearly as melancholy as Get Carter

During an extreme heatwave, a beautiful Florida woman and a seedy lawyer engage in an affair while plotting the murder of her rich husband.

Feels alike?
The Narrow Margin poster
The Narrow Margin
1952 · dir. Richard Fleischer
🍅 100%7.6thriller · crime

Hitman sits at the heart of each

A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's widow on a train journey from Chicago to Los Angeles.

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Thief poster
Thief
1981 · dir. Michael Mann
🍅 80%7.4crime · thriller · drama

Both circle grief and gangster

The difference: Plays it as drama more than Get Carter does

Frank is an expert professional safecracker, specialized in high-profile diamond heists. He plans to use his ill-gotten income to retire from crime and build a nice life for himself complete with a home, wife and kids. To accelerate the process, he signs on with a top gangster for a big score.

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Criss Cross poster
Criss Cross
1949 · dir. Robert Siodmak
🍅 86%7.4crime · thriller

Gritty and tense in the same breath

The difference: A 1940s film, from a different era of filmmaking

An armored-car guard must join a robbery after being caught with his ex-wife by her gangster husband.

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Out of the Past poster
Out of the Past
1947 · dir. Jacques Tourneur
🍅 87%8crime · thriller

The same preoccupation in both: gangster

The peaceful life of a gas station owner is disrupted when a man from his past arrives in town and forces him to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.

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The Big Clock poster
The Big Clock
1948 · dir. John Farrow
🍅 100%7.6crime · thriller

Atmospheric crime in both cases

George Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor, has to postpone a vacation with his wife - again - when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence that he is the killer.

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Lethal Weapon 2 poster
Lethal Weapon 2
1989 · dir. Richard Donner
🍅 82%7.3action · thriller · crime

Grief is the engine of both

The difference: Leans action where Get Carter does not

Riggs and Murtaugh are on the trail of South African diplomats using their immunity to engage in criminal activities.

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Sin City poster
Sin City
2005 · dir. Robert Rodriguez
🍅 76%8crime · thriller

Both built around neo-noir

Welcome to Sin City. This town beckons to the tough, the corrupt, the brokenhearted. Some call it dark… Hard-boiled. Then there are those who call it home — Crooked cops, sexy dames, desperate vigilantes. Some are seeking revenge, others lust after redemption, and then there are those hoping for a little of both. A universe of unlikely and reluctant heroes still trying to do the right thing in a city that refuses to care.

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Le Samouraï poster
Le Samouraï
1967 · dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
🍅 92%8crime · thriller · drama

Both built around hitman

After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.

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Tokyo Drifter poster
Tokyo Drifter
1966 · dir. Seijun Suzuki
🍅 93%7.1thriller · crime · action

Gritty thriller, and it commits to that

After yakuza boss Kurata dissolves his own criminal empire, a rival kingpin offers a position to Kurata's top operative, Tetsuya "Phoenix Tetsu" Hondo. When the fiercely loyal Tetsu declines, Otsuka taps unstoppable Tatsuzo the "Viper", a ruthless gun-for-hire, to assassinate him. As the Viper trails his target through the countryside, the agile Phoenix Tetsu grows concerned that one of his former associates has betrayed him.

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The Long Good Friday poster
The Long Good Friday
1980 · dir. John Mackenzie
🍅 97%7.5crime · thriller · drama

Crime built on tension, twice over

In the late 1970s, Cockney crime boss Harold Shand, a gangster trying to become a legitimate property mogul, has big plans to get the American Mafia to bankroll his transformation of a derelict area of London into the possible venue for a future Olympic Games. However, a series of bombings targets his empire on the very weekend the Americans are in town. Shand is convinced there is a traitor in his organization, and sets out to eliminate the rat in typically ruthless fashion.

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Night Moves poster
Night Moves
1975 · dir. Arthur Penn
🍅 78%7.1thriller · crime · drama

Thriller with a pulse of atmosphere, in both cases

Private detective and former football player Harry Moseby gets hired on to what seems a standard missing person case - a former Hollywood actress wants Moseby to find and return her daughter. Harry travels to Florida to find her, but he begins to see a connection between the runaway girl, the world of Hollywood stuntmen, and a suspicious mechanic when an unsolved murder comes to light.

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The best-reviewed films that share Get Carter's defining feeling.