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GoodFellas poster

Movies that feel likeGoodFellas (1990)

The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.

If you loved GoodFellas, the closest films we have are Casino (1995), Blow (2001) and The Departed (2006). All three share GoodFellas' contemplative and gritty feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is A Short Film About Killing (1988).

🍅 93% Rotten Tomatoes★ 8.7 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Martin Scorsesecontemplativegritty
8 of 12 streaming nowNetflix · HBO Max · Amazon Prime Video

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If GoodFellas hit the spot, these will too

Casino poster
Casino
1995 · dir. Martin Scorsese
🍅 79%★ 8.2crime · dramaPrime Video

That intoxicating rise narrated from inside, before the rot sets in

The difference: Colder and more corporate — a business autopsy more than a life

In Las Vegas, two best friends--a casino executive and a Mafia enforcer--compete for a gambling empire and a fast-living, fast-loving socialite.

Blow poster
Blow
2001 · dir. Ted Demme
🍅 56%★ 7.5crime · drama

The whole arc of a criminal career, from the high to the reckoning

The difference: Sadder and softer — a sympathetic drift rather than a swagger

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.

The Departed poster
The Departed
2006 · dir. Martin Scorsese
🍅 91%★ 8.5drama · thriller · crimeMax

Scorsese again on loyalty, snitching, and the paranoia that follows

The difference: A tight double-agent thriller — plot machinery over lived-in years

To take down South Boston's Irish Mafia, the police send in one of their own to infiltrate the underworld, not realizing the syndicate has done likewise. While an undercover cop curries favor with the mob kingpin, a career criminal rises through the police ranks. But both sides soon discover there's a mole among them.

A Short Film About Killing poster
A Short Film About Killing
1988 · dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski
🍅 91%★ 7.9crime · drama

Both are built on the same subject: prison

Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.

Gangs of New York poster
Gangs of New York
2002 · dir. Martin Scorsese
🍅 72%★ 7.5drama · history · crimeParamount+Starz

Street power and tribal loyalty in a New York built on both

The difference: A period epic with formal grandeur — less intimate, more staged

In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.

Midnight Express poster
Midnight Express
1978 · dir. Alan Parker
🍅 90%★ 7.5drama · crime

A true story of crime's price paid in years behind bars

The difference: All punishment, no high life — the seduction phase is skipped

Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".

American Gangster poster
American Gangster
2007 · dir. Ridley Scott
🍅 81%★ 7.8drama · crimeApple TV+Starz

An empire built with real discipline while the law circles patiently

The difference: Measured and procedural — no giddy momentum, no voice in your ear

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.

The Godfather Part II poster
The Godfather Part II
1974 · dir. Francis Ford Coppola
🍅 96%★ 9drama · crimePrime VideoParamount+

A crime family's grip on a man tightening across a whole lifetime

The difference: Stately and operatic — dread builds slowly, without the rush

In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile poster
🍅 54%★ 6.7drama · crimeNetflix

True crime told from inside the charmer's orbit

The difference: One predator's story — no crew, no rise-and-fall texture

A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy, from the perspective of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who refused to believe the truth about him for years.

Close-Up poster
Close-Up
1990 · dir. Abbas Kiarostami
🍅 89%★ 8.2crime · drama

The same mix in both: stillness, then grit

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.

American History X poster
American History X
1998 · dir. Tony Kaye
🍅 84%★ 8.5drama

Common ground: gangster

Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.

A Prophet poster
A Prophet
2009 · dir. Jacques Audiard
🍅 96%★ 7.8crime · drama

A nobody's education inside a criminal hierarchy, rung by rung

The difference: Confined to prison walls — French, harsh, and no narrator's charm

Sentenced to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena is alone in the world and can neither read nor write. On his arrival at the prison, he seems younger and more brittle than the others detained there. At once he falls under the sway of a group of Corsicans who enforce their rule in the prison. As the 'missions' go by, he toughens himself and wins the confidence of the Corsican group.

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The best-reviewed films that share GoodFellas’ defining feeling.