Movies Like Joe
If you loved Joe'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

American Gangster
Loosely based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina, who smuggled heroin into the United States on American service planes returning from the Vietnam War, before being detained by a task force led by Newark Detective Richie Roberts.

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.

Miller's Crossing
Set in 1929, a political boss and his advisor have a parting of the ways when they both fall for the same woman.

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.

Lord of War
Yuri Orlov is a globetrotting arms dealer and, through some of the deadliest war zones, he struggles to stay one step ahead of a relentless Interpol agent, his business rivals and even some of his customers who include many of the world's most notorious dictators. Finally, he must also face his own conscience.

Gringo
An American businessman with a stake in a pharmaceutical company that's about to go public finds his life is thrown into turmoil by an incident in Mexico.

Blow
A boy named George Jung grows up in a struggling family in the 1950's. His mother nags at her husband as he is trying to make a living for the family. It is finally revealed that George's father cannot make a living and the family goes bankrupt. George does not want the same thing to happen to him, and his friend Tuna, in the 1960's, suggests that he deal marijuana. He is a big hit in California in the 1960's, yet he goes to jail, where he finds out about the wonders of cocaine. As a result, when released, he gets rich by bringing cocaine to America. However, he soon pays the price.

True Romance
Clarence marries hooker Alabama, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood, while the owners of the coke try to reclaim it.
More Movies Like Joe

Belly
Tommy Bundy and Sincere are best friends as well as infamous and ruthless criminals and shot-callers in the hood. Respected by many but feared by all. As the police are closing in on them and new players are looking for a come up, will their reign last?

Dark Blue
Set during the Rodney King riots, a robbery homicide investigation triggers a series of events that will cause a corrupt LAPD officer to question his tactics.

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

Last Man Standing
John Smith is a mysterious stranger who is drawn into a vicious war between two Prohibition-era gangs. In a dangerous game, he switches allegiances from one to another, offering his services to the highest bidder. As the death toll mounts, Smith takes the law into his own hands in a deadly race to stay alive.

Adulthood
After serving six years for killing his schoolmate, a young man learns that someone is out for revenge.

Havoc
When a drug heist swerves lethally out of control, a jaded cop fights his way through a corrupt city's criminal underworld to save a politician's son.

Clean
Tormented by a past life, garbage man Clean attempts a life of quiet redemption. But when his good intentions mark him a target of a local crime boss, Clean is forced to reconcile with the violence of his past.

Code of Silence
A Chicago cop is caught in the middle of a gang war while his own comrades shun him because he wants to take an irresponsible cop down.

Killing Them Softly
Jackie Cogan is an enforcer hired to restore order after three dumb guys rob a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse.

Pulp Fiction
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.

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.

King of New York
A former drug lord returns from prison determined to wipe out all his competition and distribute the profits of his operations to New York's poor and lower classes in this stylish and ultra violent modern twist on Robin Hood.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Joe (1970): 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 Joe.
See full details for Joe (1970)