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Sin City poster

Movies that feel likeSin City (2005)

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.

If you loved Sin City, the closest films we have are SPL: Kill Zone (2005), Body Heat (1981) and One False Move (1992). All three share Sin City's gritty and tense feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Deep Cover (1992).

🍅 76% Rotten Tomatoes★ 8 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Robert Rodriguezgrittytensebleakatmospheric
9 of 12 streaming nowHBO Max · Amazon Prime Video · Paramount Plus Premium

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If Sin City hit the spot, these will too

Looking for the series itself? Also in this series: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

SPL: Kill Zone poster
SPL: Kill Zone
2005 · dir. Wilson Yip
🍅 80%★ 6.9action · crime · dramaPrime Video

Cops and crime lords locked in a fatalistic, brutal underworld

The difference: Hong Kong martial-arts realism — no pulp stylization or anthology

Chan, an articulate senior detective nearing the end of his career, is taking care of the daughter of a witness killed by ruthless crime lord Po. Martial arts expert Ma is set to take over as head of the crime unit, replacing Chan who wants an early retirement.

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

Sweat-soaked noir where desire walks you straight into a trap

The difference: One slow-burn scheme — sultry and patient, never hyper-violent

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

One False Move poster
One False Move
1992 · dir. Carl Franklin
🍅 93%★ 7.1crime · drama · thriller

Killers drifting toward a reckoning in a town too small to hide them

The difference: Lean and naturalistic — its violence hurts instead of thrills

Following a series of drug deals and murders, three criminals -- Fantasia, Ray Malcolm and Pluto -- travel from Los Angeles to Houston, finally arriving in a small Arkansas town to go into hiding. Two detectives from the LAPD, who are already on the case, contact the town's sheriff, Dale Dixon, to alert him of the fugitives' presence in the area. Underestimating Dixon, the criminals have no idea what they are about to face.

Sexy Beast poster
Sexy Beast
2001 · dir. Jonathan Glazer
🍅 87%★ 7.3crime · thriller · drama

A criminal past that will not stay buried, told with menace and style

The difference: One job, one psychopath — talk does the damage, not gunplay

Ex-safecracker Gal Dove has served his time behind bars and is blissfully retired to a Spanish villa paradise with a wife he adores. The idyll is shattered by the arrival of his nemesis Don Logan, intent on persuading Gal to return to London for one last big job.

Jackie Brown poster
Jackie Brown
1997 · dir. Quentin Tarantino
🍅 88%★ 7.5crime · drama · thriller

Hard-luck players scheming over dirty money in a lived-in underworld

The difference: Patient, talky and humane — Tarantino at his least cartoonish

Jackie Brown is a flight attendant who gets caught in the middle of smuggling cash into the country for her gunrunner boss. When the cops try to use Jackie to get to her boss, she hatches a plan — with help from a bail bondsman — to keep the money for herself.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado poster
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
2018 · dir. Stefano Sollima
🍅 62%★ 7.1action · crime · thrillerStarz

A morally scorched world where every faction plays dirty

The difference: Grim procedural realism — zero comic-book flourish

Agent Matt Graver teams up with operative Alejandro Gillick to prevent Mexican drug cartels from smuggling terrorists across the United States border.

Deep Cover poster
Deep Cover
1992 · dir. Bill Duke
🍅 87%★ 7action · thriller · crime

A narrated descent through a city's drug trade, noir to the bone

The difference: A straight undercover-cop story — grounded and politically pointed

Black police officer Russell Stevens applies for a special anti-drug squad which targets the highest boss of cocaine delivery to LA—the Colombian foreign minister's nephew. Russell works his way up from the bottom undercover, until he reaches the boss.

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

A crime kingdom cracking apart over one catastrophic day

The difference: Grounded London gangland — its power is acting, not visuals

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.

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

Both are built on the same subject: black and white

The difference: Takes it somewhere less bleak than Sin City does

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.

A Simple Plan poster
A Simple Plan
1998 · dir. Sam Raimi
🍅 91%★ 7.5crime · drama · thrillerParamount+

Ordinary people rotted through by one bad choice after another

The difference: Snowbound and quiet — dread accumulates, blood barely splashes

Captivated by the lure of sudden wealth, the quiet rural lives of two brothers erupt into conflicts of greed, paranoia and distrust when over $4 million in cash is discovered at the remote site of a downed small airplane. Their simple plan to retain the money while avoiding detection opens a Pandora's box when the fear of getting caught triggers panicked behavior and leads to virulent consequences.

Double Indemnity poster
Double Indemnity
1944 · dir. Billy Wilder
🍅 97%★ 8.3crime · thriller

One thread runs through both: black and white

The difference: 61 years apart, and the 1940s show

An insurance representative is seduced by a dissatisfied housewife into a scheme of insurance fraud and murder that arouses the suspicion of his colleague, a claims investigator.

The Stranger poster
The Stranger
1946 · dir. Orson Welles
🍅 97%★ 7.3thriller · crimePrime VideoStarz

Gritty where it counts, tense underneath

An investigator from the War Crimes Commission travels to Connecticut to find an infamous Nazi, who may be hiding out in a small town in the guise of a distinguished professor engaged to the Supreme Court Justice’s daughter.

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The best-reviewed films that share Sin City’s defining feeling.