Movies Like Shanghai
If you loved Shanghai's Drama and Thriller 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

Allied
In 1942, an intelligence officer in North Africa encounters a female French Resistance fighter on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. When they reunite in London, their relationship is tested by the pressures of war.

Hammett
Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.

Notorious
In order to help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. As they begin to fall for one another, Alicia is instructed to win the affections of Alexander Sebastian, a Nazi hiding out in Brazil. When Sebastian becomes serious about his relationship with Alicia, the stakes get higher, and Devlin must watch her slip further undercover.

The White Countess
In 1930s Shanghai, 'The White Countess' is both Sofia, a fallen member of the exiled Russian aristocracy, and a nightclub created by a blind American diplomat who asks Sofia to be the centerpiece of the world he wants to create.

Overdrive
Master car thieves square off against French gangsters in the South of France with money, women and lives all on the line.

The Good Doctor
Dr. Martin Blake, who has spent his life looking for respect, meets an 18-year-old patient named Diane, suffering from a kidney infection, and gets a much-needed boost of self-esteem. However, when her health starts improving, Martin fears losing her, so he begins tampering with her treatment, keeping Diane sick and in the hospital right next to him.

The Exception
Nothing is as it seems in this riveting World War 2 thriller as a wary soldier goes to investigate a mysterious German monarch at his secluded mansion, leading him into a web of deceit and a dangerous love affair with a local Jewish woman.

Shining Through
Spirited New Yorker Linda Voss goes to work for international lawyer and secret Office of Strategic Services operative Ed Leland just before World War II. As they fall in love, the United States enters the fight against Hitler, and Linda volunteers to work for Ed spying undercover behind Nazi lines. Assigned to uncover information about a German bomb, Linda also has personal motives to fulfill: discovering the fate of her Jewish family members in Berlin.
More Movies Like Shanghai

The Quiller Memorandum
After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.

Trigger Point
Nicolas Shaw is a retired U.S. special operative who becomes part of an elite 'invisible' team that quietly takes out the worst villains around the world.

Chief of Station
After learning that the death of his wife was not an accident, a former CIA Station Chief is forced back into the espionage underworld, teaming up with an adversary to unravel a conspiracy that challenges everything he thought he knew.

Winter's Tale
A burglar falls for an heiress as she dies in his arms. When he learns that he has the gift of reincarnation, he sets out to save her.

Possession
Maud Bailey, a brilliant English academic, is researching the life and work of poet Christabel La Motte. Roland Michell is an American scholar in London to study Randolph Henry Ash, now best-known for a collection of poems dedicated to his wife. When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that appear to be from Ash to La Motte, they follow a trail of clues across England, echoing the journey of the couple over a century earlier.

Empire of the Sun
Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

The Secrets We Keep
In post-World War II America, a woman, rebuilding her life in the suburbs with her husband, kidnaps her neighbor and seeks vengeance for the heinous war crimes she believes he committed against her.

The Commuter
A businessman, on his daily commute home, gets unwittingly caught up in a criminal conspiracy that threatens not only his life but the lives of those around him.

King Rat
When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. Among the American prisoners is Cpl. King, a wheeler-dealer who has managed to establish a pretty good life for himself in the camp. King soon forms a friendship with an upper-class British officer who is fascinated with King's enthusiastic approach to life.

Weekend in Taipei
A former DEA agent and a former undercover operative revisit their romance during a fateful weekend in Taipei, unaware of the dangerous consequences of their past.

Eye of the Needle
Great Britain, 1944, during World War II. Relentlessly pursued by several MI5 agents, Henry Faber the Needle, a ruthless German spy in possession of vital information about D-Day, takes refuge on Storm Island, an inhospitable, sparsely inhabited island off the coast of northern Scotland.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Shanghai (2010): Drama and Thriller 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 Shanghai.
See full details for Shanghai (2010)
