Some of the best movies like Better Call Saul's final season begins to collect its much-deserved awards, that desire to experience the cinematic joys that Vince Gilligan can co. can produce will start to be seeping back into the back of fans' minds, but there are thankfully so many choices when it comes to great crime movies that are similar to Breaking Bad.
From crime comedies to gangster sagas, the best movies like Breaking Bad share the series' love of visual creativity and transformative narratives.
Cheap Thrills (2013)
Available to stream on Pluto TV, Tubi, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Peacock
This dark crime comedy from director E.L. Katz really makes the audience feel the desperation of the main character as he embarks on a night of escalating dares that are being encouraged by a wealthy couple. The film reaches such extreme states of degradation and brutality in such a short period of time that the methodology behind how each dare is set up and executed becomes indisputably impressive.
Besides the film's social commentary on the power that money and pride have to change a human being for the worse, Cheap Thrills should also be of interest to Breaking Bad fans as it stars actor Pat Healy in the lead role. While Healy did not appear in Breaking Bad, he did end up playing an important role in the final season of the prequel series Better Call Saul and there are numerous shades of Walter White in his character from Cheap Thrills.
Frozen River (2008)
Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video
Melissa Leo received an Oscar nomination for her lead role as a struggling mother of two who breaks bad and becomes involved in a people-smuggling ring in this drama thriller from writer and director Courtney Hunt. Hunt would also receive an Oscar nomination for her screenplay, with the work of both her and Leo easily being worthy of taking the award.
Frozen River, like Breaking Bad, really stresses the aspects of poverty that fuel crime, producing a film that's both an emotionally involving crime thriller and a painfully honest domestic drama. Set during Christmas in the northernmost part of Upstate New York, the movie, like Breaking Bad, also derives a huge amount of personality from its location's environment and culture, as well as the sets. The film never goes for the intensity of Breaking Bad in its humor or violence, but it does match the show in of how authentic each character, home, and situation feels.
The Infiltrator (2016)
Available to stream on Pluto TV, Tubi, YouTube, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Peacock
Even after Breaking Bad's success, Bryan Cranston has always typically been a ing actor in movies as opposed to a leading man. However, there are exceptions and the one that Breaking Bad fans should really take notice of is Brad Furman's The Infiltrator. The film is an adaptation of Robert Mazur's autobiographical novel, which tells the story of his time as a U.S. Customs special agent when he played a part in taking down part of Pablo Escobar's drug empire in the 1980s.
Cranston is very well-cast in the role as Mazur's undercover work requires him to lead an incredibly dangerous double life, and Cranston's capability to slip between roles is well-documented throughout Breaking Bad and get its chance to stretch its legs again here. Like Breaking Bad, The Infiltrator also isn't defined entirely by its often stylized look into the criminal underworld and has a lot of consideration for family drama too. It's an aspect of the film that feels sincere thanks to the performances and the screenplay, which was adapted from Mazur's novel by Furman's mother, Ellen Brown Furman.
Traffic (2000)
Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video
Though not discussed in the same way as classic crime films like Soderbergh's distinctive use of color, particularly the yellow tones used for the segments of the story set in Mexico, would heavily inform Breaking Bad's visual style.
Traffic also remains one of the most notable films about the War on Drugs released in the 21st century. Like Breaking Bad, the movie looks at the issues of the U.S./Mexico drug trade from both sides of the border and has as much time for discussing the emotional struggles of addiction as it does for the dangers of tangling with the cartels. The ensemble is also outstanding, with Benicio del Toro winning an Oscar for his performance as well as Soderbergh winning Best Director.
Hell Or High Water (2016)
Available to stream on Hulu
Fans of the neo-Western elements of Breaking Bad will find no finer a replacement for them than the ones in this story of two bank-robbing brothers from Yellowstone such a success but is driven forward by its electrifying robbery scenes and is given its aesthetic soul through the view of the wide and barren landscapes of West Texas produced by Mackenzie's longtime cinematographer Giles Nuttgens.
Anyone who loved the dynamic between Hank and Steve Gomez on Breaking Bad will also get a lot out of the intertwining story that follows the two Texas Rangers hunting the two brothers. As the viewer becomes more involved with each pair, the moral ambiguity of the story becomes more pronounced, and, like Breaking Bad, Hell or High Water possesses an overwhelming power to make the audience root for the bad guy.
No Country For Old Men (2007)
Available to stream on HBO Max
As what is still the No Country for Old Men is visually stunning and viscerally engaging. The simple story follows a man who discovers a briefcase full of money from a deal gone bad in the desert as well as the killer who's hired to find him and get it back, but it's the wider themes of choice and predestination at play that really make the film feel as robust as it does.
Breaking Bad fans will not be left wanting by the film's plentiful acts of cold-blooded violence, but the main draw is still the strength of the performances and the Coens' direction. Javier Bardem created a movie villain for the ages with his Oscar-winning turn as hitman Anton Chigurh, with his being only one of the four major awards that the film took home that night.
Shot Caller (2017)
Available to stream on HBO Max
Ric Roman Waugh’s prison thriller Shot Caller stars Game of Thrones actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as a successful California stockbroker who pleas down to a short prison sentence after a deadly car accident. Once inside the system, however, he finds himself at the mercy of the prison’s gangs, particularly the local White Supremacists, and is forced to sink further and further into a life of violent crime in order to survive.
The harsh realities and injustices of the system that the main character finds himself trapped within echo many of Breaking Bad’s social commentaries, especially how a normal man becomes a part of a violent White Supremacist criminal culture. Mostly, however, Breaking Bad fans should take note of Shot Caller for the progressive and ultimately complete transformation of its main character from a mild-mannered modern middle-class man into a remorseless killer who builds an impressive criminal empire.
Life Without Principle (2011)
Available to stream on Tubi
Johnnie To’s Hong Kong crime drama Life Without Principle follows a loosely-connected ensemble of small-time players (a cop, a low-level gangster, and a bank teller) as they face morally compromising situations in their collective quest to simply get by in modern life.
Fans of Breaking Bad’s focus on the mundane reality of crime will find a lot of similarities in Life Without Principle, particularly in its examination of moral equivalency and guilt. To’s following crime movie, Drug War, is also worthy of note due to its similar subject matter to Breaking Bad, despite a more traditional action thriller structure.
Gangs Of Wasseypur Parts 1 & 2 (2012)
Available to stream on MUBI
Anurag Kashyap’s gangster epic, Gangs of Wasseypur, is a two-part story spanning over fifty years of bloody rivalry in the titular Wasseypur neighborhood of India. The film sets its scenes and conflicts in rich detail, ultimately facilitating a gargantuan story of iconic personalities and bitter family feuds.
Wasseypur’s desert landscape and the movie’s shocking violence will bring back memories of Breaking Bad’s alternate take on the kind of tragic crime fable that was, more often than not, reserved for the American mafia or the metropolitan streets of tourist hubs like New York, Paris or Hong Kong.
Animal Kingdom (2010)
Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video
Writer and director David Michôd's Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom revolves around a highly dysfunctional family of bank robbers in Melbourne as they face extinction from a trigger-happy police squad that’s out to finish them once and for all. After the death of his mother, 17-year-old Joshua Cody finds himself flung back into this family that she attempted to keep him from, and Joshua is irrevocably sucked into their paranoid and murderous world.
For Breaking Bad fans, James Frecheville’s performance as Joshua will no doubt conjure up memories of Jesse Pinkman being in way over his head. However, the whole ensemble evokes the flawless network of performances that went into making the realistic ecosystem of Breaking Bad's drama. Unsurprisingly, was adapted into a successful US-set TV show that ran from 2016 to 2022.
