Movies Like The Set-Up
If you loved The Set-Up's Drama and Crime storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.
★ Top Picks
Johnny O'Clock
When an employee at an illegal gambling den dies suspiciously, her sister, Nancy, looks into the situation and falls for Johnny O'Clock, a suave partner in the underground casino. Selfish and non-committal by nature, Johnny slowly begins to return Nancy's affection and decides to run away with her, but conflict within his business threatens their plans. As Johnny tries to distance himself from the casino, his shady past comes back to haunt him.
The Damned Don't Cry
Fed up with her small-town marriage, a woman goes after the big time and gets mixed up with the mob.
Body and Soul
Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.
99 River Street
A former boxer turned taxi driver earns the scorn of his nagging wife and gets mixed up with jewel thieves.
Hell Drivers
An ex-con trying to go clean ends up working for a crooked trucking company swindling money.
Nightfall
An innocent man turns fugitive as he reconstructs events that implicate him for a murder and robbery he did not commit.
Framed
Truck driver Mike Lambert is a down-and-out mining engineer searching for a job. When his rig breaks down in a small town, he happens upon a venomous seductress. When her boyfriend robs a bank, they intend to frame Lambert.
More Movies Like The Set-Up
Force of Evil
Lawyer Joe Morse wants to consolidate all the small-time numbers racket operators into one big powerful operation. But his elder brother Leo is one of these small-time operators who wants to stay that way, preferring not to deal with the gangsters who dominate the big-time.
Hollow Triumph
Pursued by the big-time gambler he robbed, John Muller assumes a new identity—with unfortunate results.
The Big Combo
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster's girlfriend.
Pitfall
An insurance man wishing for a more exciting life becomes wrapped up in the affairs of an imprisoned embezzler, his model girlfriend, and a violent private investigator.
His Kind of Woman
Career gambler Dan Milner agrees to a $50,000 deal to leave the USA for Mexico, only to find himself entangled with fellow guests at a luxurious resort and suspecting that the man who hired him may be the deported crime boss Nick Ferraro aiming to re-enter to the USA.
Cigarettes & Coffee
At a desert diner, the lives of five strangers become linked through a single twenty-dollar bill. Shot for $20,000 and starring Philip Baker Hall, the short premiered at Sundance and later inspired Anderson’s debut feature Hard Eight (1996).
Mr. Lucky
A conman poses as a war relief fundraiser, but when he falls for a charity worker, his conscience begins to trouble him.
The Street with No Name
After two gang-related killings in "Center City," a suspect (who was framed) is arrested, released on bail...and murdered. Inspector Briggs of the FBI recruits a young agent, Gene Cordell, to go undercover in the shadowy Skid Row area (alias George Manly) as a potential victim of the same racket. Soon, Gene meets Alec Stiles, neurotic mastermind who's "building an organization along scientific lines." Stiles recruits Cordell, whose job becomes a lot more dangerous.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with The Set-Up (1949): Drama and Crime themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of The Set-Up.
See full details for The Set-Up (1949)