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Straight Time poster

Movies that feel likeStraight Time (1978)

After being released on parole, a burglar attempts to go straight, get a regular job, and just go by the rules. He soon finds himself back in jail at the hands of a power-hungry parole officer.

If you loved Straight Time, the closest films we have are Blue Collar (1978), A Short Film About Killing (1988) and Pixote (1980). All three share Straight Time's gritty and contemplative feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is R (2010).

🍅 82% Rotten Tomatoes★ 7.4 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Ulu Grosbardgrittycontemplative
5 of 12 streaming nowHBO Max · Criterion Channel · Film Movement Plus

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See it on the Mood Map

If Straight Time hit the spot, these will too

Blue Collar poster
Blue Collar
1978 · dir. Paul Schrader
🍅 96%★ 7.5drama · crime

Both keep coming back to the same thing: robbery

Fed up with mistreatment at the hands of both management and union brass, and coupled with financial hardships on each man's end, three auto assembly line workers hatch a plan to rob a safe at union headquarters.

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

Both are working the same pair: prison, murder

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

Pixote poster
Pixote
1980 · dir. Héctor Babenco
🍅 94%★ 7.9crime · drama

The same mix in both: grit, then stillness

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

R poster
R
2010 · dir. Tobias Lindholm
🍅 91%★ 7.1crime · drama

The same preoccupation in both: prison

The difference: Made in the 2010s, in a different era of the craft

Imprisoned for violent assault, Rune is placed in the hardcore ward, where his survival depends on quickly learning the prison's parallel world of rules, honor, and obligations.

Green Fish poster
Green Fish
1997 · dir. Lee Chang-dong
★ 7drama · crime

Crime built on grit, twice over

Returning home and finding his town drastically changed, a former soldier falls in with gangsters.

Pickpocket poster
Pickpocket
1959 · dir. Robert Bresson
🍅 93%★ 7.5crime · drama

Contemplative drama, and it commits to that

Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in order to improve his craft. With a police inspector keeping an eye on him, Michel also tries to get a straight job, but the temptation to steal is hard to resist.

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

Gritty crime in both cases

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.

The Wrong Man poster
The Wrong Man
1956 · dir. Alfred Hitchcock
🍅 93%★ 7.4crime · dramaMax

Common ground: robbery

In 1953, an innocent man named Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero is arrested after being mistaken for an armed robber.

Little Caesar poster
Little Caesar
1931 · dir. Mervyn LeRoy
🍅 96%★ 7.2drama · crime

Both are built on the same subject: murder

A small-time hood shoots his way to the top, but how long can he stay there?

The Thin Blue Line poster
The Thin Blue Line
1988 · dir. Errol Morris
🍅 100%★ 7.9crime · documentary

Drama with a pulse of stillness, in both cases

The difference: Sits closer to documentary than Straight Time does

One night in November 1976, after his car breaks down on a road outside Dallas, Randall Dale Adams accepts a ride from teenager David Harris. Harris is driving a stolen vehicle and, later that night, when Dallas police officer Robert Wood pulls the car over to check its headlights, he is shot and killed. A jury believes Adams is the killer, but stylized reenactments and interviews with key figures, conflicting testimonies and evidence are presented to argue that Adams was framed by a corrupt justice system, ultimately leading to his exoneration.

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

Both know what they want from crime

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".

My Name Ain't Johnny poster
My Name Ain't Johnny
2008 · dir. Mauro Lima
★ 7.2crime · drama

Drama in the same key

The true story of João Guilherme Estrella ("Johnny"), a young middle-class bon vivant who became a big-time cocaine dealer in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s.

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The best-reviewed films that share Straight Time’s defining feeling.