Movies like offer explosive action, thought-provoking political intrigue, and awards-pedigree acting talent. Released in 2015, Sicario is a slow-burning thriller about the nuances of drug cartel operations and the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the movie focuses on three perspectives: an FBI agent, played by Emily Blunt; a secretive government agent, played by Josh Brolin; and an even shadowier assassin, played by Benicio del Toro. The film was a critical and commercial success, and it got a sequel three years later, Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

Only the best action-thriller movies remain comparable to . However, many fan-favorite films by director Denis Villeneuve and other acclaimed filmmakers hit the same spots. Several are also available for subscribers on major streaming platforms or even for free, making it easy to find movies like Sicario for fans who love Villeneuve's action thriller.

Sicario is a movie about people who move in the shadows, and one of the best action thrillers to do this similar thing is Ronin. The underrated '90s movie stars Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Sean Bean, and Stellan Skarsgård as . However, they soon find that they have been dragged into some larger conspiracy where they are the pawns.

Ronin is a thrill ride with some of the best car chases in movie history. Like Sicario, . It is also an action thriller with a somewhat melancholic tone that is perfect for audiences who enjoyed the darkness of Sicario.

Sicario sets up the heroic story of a fight against the dangerous and vicious drug cartels. However, the movie challenges the audience by questioning the tactics used in fighting such evil in the world. This is an idea that was explored earlier within the universe of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Clear and Present Danger is Harrison Ford's second film as Ryan,.

There are some great action set pieces in Clear and Present Danger, but it is also a political thriller that takes place in the highest stations of American politics. In these aspects, Ford's Ryan is very much like Sicario's Kate Mercer in that he is going on behind the scenes that have turned her into a pawn.

There are few movies that can match the unrelenting tension that is experienced throughout Sicario, but Training Day is a crime thriller that matches it in that regard. Denzel Washington gives an Oscar-winning performance in Training Day as Detective Harris, , Jake (Ethan Hawke). Throughout the grim and violent day, Jake is taken on a dark and surreal journey into the dangerous underbelly of the city, constantly questioning what Harris is truly up to.

Jake is very much a similar character to Kate in Sicario. They are both . Both movies excel at leaving the audience with a sense of complete unease, feeling that something terrible can happen at any moment.

Being based on the quintessential '80s series of the same name, many people dismissed Miami Vice as a cheesy cop show remake, but that was far from the truth. Director Michael Mann brings his signature style to this intense and thrilling ride that stars Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as two to bring the entire operation down.

The set-up of . However, instead of the shady truth hiding in the dark of these cooperations, Miami Vice is more about the intense undercover operation at hand, with Farrell's detective finding himself treading into dangerous territory. It makes for a vivid and exciting crime saga like only Mann can deliver.

While Sicario is an action thriller, it uses violence in a hard-hitting way, making it visceral and impactful. This is also the same in Steven Spielberg’s Munich. The movie is based on real events that , Germany, in which Palestinian terrorists captured and killed a group of Israeli athletes. Eric Bana and Daniel Craig star in the movie as Mossad agents who are assigned to the mission of tracking down and killing anyone involved in the attack.

Just like Villeneuve does with Sicario, Spielberg is able to create moments of incredible tension and suspense while also staging action set pieces that are grounded and brutal. I. It is a grim and harrowing experience that highlights how violence only begets more violence.

Taylor Sheridan wrote the screenplay for Sicario, and since the movie's release, he has quickly transitioned into a premier thriller director and television showrunner. Most fans today know him from his TV shows, like Yellowstone and Mayor of Kingstown. Sheridan first worked with Mayor of Kingstown star Jeremy Renner in Wind River. led by an out-of-her-element FBI agent, played by Elizabeth Olsen, and a local tracker, played by Jeremy Renner.

Wind River may swap the sand for snow, but . Thanks to screenwriter Sheridan, the film remains similar, but this movie has more of the writer's fingerprints since he also served as the director. While Sicario showed the story of the U.S. government's seedier side, this movie also shows dangerous politics, as missing person statistics are kept for every demographic group except Native American women.

Zero Dark Thirty is a dramatization of the hunt for terrorist Osama bin Laden. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the movie stars Jessica Chastain as a fictional CIA intelligence analyst sent to the Middle East to work on finding bin Laden and ordering the attack against the terrorist. The story plays out very similar to Sicario, with . It was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress, but only won for its sound editing.

As Sicario explores the war on drugs, Zero Dark Thirty delves into some of the darkest facets of the war on terror. It keeps the tension high throughout, building to the blistering final set piece as the story comes to a head by re-enacting the raid on bin Laden's compound.

Another film that examines the global war on terror, Syriana, takes a non-linear approach and follows several main characters in a variety of situations across the world. , with nothing, including assassination, being off the table in the game of conflicting interests. The film then shows how the United States will do anything, no matter how morally corrupt, to get its way and come out on top.

Fans of Sicario's stellar cast will be equally impressed by Syriana's ensemble, which features George Clooney in Oscar-winning form alongside fellow Oscar winners Chris Cooper, Matt Damon, and Christopher Plummer, among many others.to ensure the wealth remains where it wants it to be.

Denis Villeneuve pulled off an impressive feat by impressing discerning sci-fi fans with a belated sequel to the beloved cult movie Blade Runner. The Oscar-winning effects and cinematography made it an experience in itself, however. Ryan Gosling is a Replicant working for the Blade Runner squad, hunting down renegade Replicants and deactivating them. However, , and it questions everything from the first movie.

Villeneuve's frequent collaborator Roger Deakins shot this movie, and he also worked as the cinematographer on Sicario. He creatively frames the outlandish action of the futuristic mystery in a way that almost makes its sprawling dystopian version of Los Angeles seem as real as Sicario's contemporary world. While this is more of a futuristic sci-fi film, the plot remains similar, as it shows the government trying to shut down people who disagree with their decisions in any way necessary.

Though not a critically praised release like Sicario, Tony Scott's revenge thriller Man on Fire has developed a massive fan base since its release. Set in Mexico, the movie sees Like Sicario, this follows a trained military assassin heading out to achieve his goals at all costs, and his path ends up littered with dead bodies along the way.

Fans of Sicario's most cold-blooded moments are all but guaranteed to have a blast with Man on Fire, with Washington delivering a commanding lead performance. The big difference is that Man on Fire is a little more playful with the action and kills, while Sicario's story is dark and deadly throughout.

No Country for Old Men is an Oscar-winning triumph and one of the best movies from the Coen brothers. Adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name, the story centers on a cat-and-mouse hunt as a ruthless killer hunts down the man who took the leftover cash from a botched drug deal. Like Sicario, who provides gripping moments of suspense before the bloodily violent action sequences.

The deaths here are plentiful, and it seems like people will die whether they deserve it or not, something that people who watched Sicario realized over the film's running time. It is also a film that shows that the good guys don't always win, and sometimes there are no real heroes.

Prisoners is a movie about after she disappears, presumably kidnapped. Jake Gyllenhaal co-stars as the determined detective assigned to the case who tries to find the missing girl but realizes the father might be looking to take the law into his own hands, crossing the line to becoming a villain himself along the way.

It's another . However, it's about one suburban kidnapping case instead of international drug-related crimes. Cinematographer Roger Deakins's stunning look makes the intimate story feel huge in scale and laid some of the groundwork for his collaboration with Villeneuve on Sicario. The story also shows there is a gray area that sometimes even good people have to cross to achieve a needed goal.

The Hunted is a cat-and-mouse thriller starring Tommy Lee Jones as a tracker who helps the FBI hunt a rogue hitman played by Benicio del Toro of Sicario. The twist here is that Jones's character trained Del Toro's assassin, so he might be the only person capable of finding and stopping the rogue soldier. as he once again steps into the role of a skilled killer, even if the movie's plot is a little more Rambo than Sicario.

While Sicario shows this tactic in action, The Hunted shows what happens to soldiers who finally realize that they have been hurting innocent people for too long in the name of their government.

Hell or High Water is a modern Western that focuses on two brothers at different points in their lives. Chris Pine portrays a man attempting to get his life back on track and take care of his son, but his brother, played by Ben Foster, from being seized by the bank.

Although the movie has a fair amount of action, The film's unidyllic look at its desert backdrop is reminiscent of Sicario's harsh visual style, and the sharp dialogue comes from Sicario's screenwriter, Taylor Sheridan, who has mastered the technique to great effect in his growing catalog of neo-Westerns on TV.

The story in Savages follows two men (Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in the California drug scene who have cornered the marijuana market in their area. They're successful, and both have a relationship with a woman called O (Blake Lively), but everything goes wrong when a Mexican cartel moves to town and their leader demands a cut. who will kill anyone to ensure his boss retains control.

It is also very violent, as director Oliver Stone doesn't pull any punches. The death and destruction involved in the illegal drug trade are on display here, much as they are in other movies like Sicario.

Snitch revolves around a man, played by Dwayne Johnson, trying to save his son from a lengthy prison sentence after police arrest the college student when a package of drugs is shipped to his house. The desperate father attempts to go undercover to bring down a more substantial drug dealer involved in the criminal underworld to reduce his son's sentence. However, like Sicario,

The movie is another look at the Mexican and American drug trade. The movie also stars Jon Bernthal, who Sicario fans will recognize as the duplicitous police officer Ted. The film is a lot less dramatic than Sicario but remains a fun action thriller nonetheless.

The Town is a . Their leader, played by director Ben Affleck, starts to have second thoughts about his life of crime when he falls for a woman they had held hostage in a heist. Jeremy Renner co-stars in the movie as Affleck's best friend and fellow robber who continues to push him to stay in the gang, tearing his loyalties in two.

It ended up being one of Affleck's best-directed films and had a similar feel to movies like Sicario, with gun fights, intense chase scenes, and a foreboding sense of dread and danger. Critics praised Renner's performance, and he even earned an Oscar nomination for his work.

Drive is an intense slow-burn movie about an enigmatic unnamed man (Ryan Gosling) and his career as a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver. The iconic lead role makes for one of Gosling's best movie characters and has proven to be a defining performance in his career in front of the camera. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and based on the cult classic novel by James Sallis, when her violent ex gets out of prison.

There's gorgeous cinematography and creative action sequences, like in movies like Sicario, and a quiet and mysterious main character at the center of the plot, similar to Benicio del Toro's Alejandro Gillick in Sicario.

A Quiet Place is a generally slow-paced psychological horror movie with a great balance of intense action and slower moments for character development. Although this movie doesn't focus on drugs or law enforcement like Sicario, The pacing is similar. The film has aliens attack humanity, but these aliens are blind, so they rely on noise to lead them to their targets. One family hides out and tries to remain silent for survival purposes.

. Any Sicario fan looking for a horror-based movie with similar character-building scenes and action will enjoy A Quiet Place. The film also had a sequel that hit theaters in 2020 and a prequel in 2024.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado attempts to have the same tone as its predecessor and received high marks from fans even if it wasn't as well-reviewed as the original. Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro return as Matt Graver and Alejandro Gillick, respectively, but Emily Blunt is missing from the main cast, and director Denis Villeneuve doesn't return either. However,

The plot focuses on smuggling people across the border from Mexico into the U.S., and the CIA becomes involved after they learn terrorists are being brought into the U.S. via this smuggling system. It's not quite the more linear experience of the original Sicario, but the searing action is much the same in the sequel. It is also a sequel that turns things on its head when the American government once again turns against one of its own.