Movies Like Don't Be Bad
If you loved Don't Be Bad's Crime and Drama 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

The Ruthless
Milan, Italy, 1967. Santo Russo, a boy of Calabrian origin, arrives north with his parents and younger brother to find better living conditions. Due to an absurd misunderstanding and his father's contempt, Santo ends up in prison, where he gets a “true education.” In 1978, he and his friends Slim and Mario embark on a 15-year criminal career, a successful and ruthless spiral of robberies, kidnappings, murders and heroin smuggling.

Dogman
Marcello, a small and gentle dog groomer, finds himself involved in a dangerous relationship of subjugation with Simone, a former violent boxer who terrorizes the entire neighborhood. In an effort to reaffirm his dignity, Marcello will submit to an unexpected act of vengeance.

A Walk Among the Tombstones
Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife.

Nostalgia
Felice returns to his native Rione Sanità in Naples to look after his dying mother, having lived abroad for the last forty years. Here he discovers that his old friend Oreste has become a notorious crimeboss.

Veronica Guerin
In this true story, Veronica Guerin is an investigative reporter for an Irish newspaper. As the drug trade begins to bleed into the mainstream, Guerin decides to take on and expose those responsible. Beginning at the bottom with addicts, Guerin then gets in touch with John Traynor, a paranoid informant. Not without some prodding, Traynor leads her to John Gilligan, the ruthless head of the operation, who does not take kindly to Guerin's nosing.

The Godfather Part II
In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.

The Big Fake
Toni Chichiarelli arrives in Rome with the dream of becoming a painter, but his talent leads him elsewhere — from art galleries to state secrets. Between art, crime, and power, his signature ends up everywhere — even in the history of Italy.

Another Day in Paradise
In the hope of a big score, two junkie couples team up to commit various drug robberies which go disastrously wrong, leading to dissent, violence, and murder.
More Movies Like Don't Be Bad

The Preppie Connection
A student at a private school uses his connections to establish a drug trafficking network.

Don't Move
While waiting for the brain surgery of his daughter Angela, victim of a motorcycle accident, the surgeon Timoteo recalls his torrid affair with and passion for Italia, a simple woman from slums in the periphery of the big city where he lives. The ghost of the beloved and sexual object of desire Italia chases him in his memories.

Sharky's Machine
Police officer Tom Sharky gets busted back to working vice, where he happens upon a scandalous conspiracy involving a local politician. Sharky's new 'machine' gathers evidence while Sharky falls in love with a woman he has never met.

Paid in Full
Ace is an impressionable young man working for a dry cleaning business. His friend, drug dealer Mitch, goes to prison. In an unrelated incident, he finds some cocaine in a pants pocket. Soon, Ace finds himself dealing cocaine for Lulu. Via lucky breaks and solid interpersonal skills, Ace moves to the top of the Harlem drug world. Of course, unfaithful employees and/or rivals conspire to bring about Ace's fall.

The Baker
A quiet, stoic man, lives a monk-like existence in self-imposed exile. When his estranged son is killed in a drug deal gone bad, he is left to look after a granddaughter he never knew existed, and he is forced back into a life he tried to put behind him.

What Doesn't Kill You
Two childhood friends from South Boston turn to crime as a way to get by, ultimately causing a strain in their personal lives and their friendship.

Once Upon a Time in America
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.

Blue Velvet
The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.

Layer Cake
When a seemingly straight-forward drug deal goes awry, XXXX has to break his die-hard rules and turn up the heat, not only to outwit the old regime and come out on top, but to save his own skin...

Requiem for a Dream
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.

Foxy Brown
A voluptuous black woman takes a job as a high-class prostitute in order to get revenge on the mobsters who murdered her boyfriend.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Don't Be Bad (2015): Crime and Drama 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 Don't Be Bad.
See full details for Don't Be Bad (2015)
