Movies Like The Operative
If you loved The Operative'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
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.
Hellion
When motocross and heavy metal obsessed, 13-year-old Jacob's delinquent behavior forces CPS to place his little brother Wes with his aunt, Jacob and his emotionally absent father must finally take responsibility for their actions and each other in order to bring Wes home.
Rogue Agent
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
Hunting Season
When a reclusive survivalist and his daughter rescue a mysterious, wounded woman from a river, they become entangled in a deadly web of violence and revenge, forcing them to confront a brutal criminal to survive.
The Deadly Affair
Charles Dobbs is a British secret agent investigating the apparent suicide of Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan. Dobbs suspects that Fennan's wife, Elsa, a survivor of a Nazi Germany extermination camp, might have some clues, but other officials want Dobbs to drop the case. So Dobbs hires a retiring inspector, Mendel, to quietly make inquiries. Dobbs isn't at all sure as there are a number of anomalies that simply can't be explained away. Dobbs is also having trouble at home with his errant wife, whom he very much loves, having frequent affairs. He's also pleased to see an old friend, Dieter Frey, who he recruited after the war. With the assistance of a colleague and a retired policeman, Dobbs tries to piece together just who is the spy and who in fact assassinated Fennan.
The Good Neighbor
A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.
The 355
A group of top female agents from American, British, Chinese, Colombian, and German government agencies are drawn together to try and stop an organization from acquiring a deadly weapon to send the world into chaos.
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.
More Movies Like The Operative
Asylum
A woman becomes very curious about one of her psychiatrist husband's inmates, a man who was found guilty in the murder and disfigurement of his former wife.
TalhotBlond
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
The System
When a young soldier, newly returned from war, gets caught up in a drug bust, he is recruited by the authorities to go undercover in a notoriously dangerous prison in order to figure out what is really going on.
Run
When a law student accidentally kills the son of a mob boss in a fight, he finds himself relentlessly pursued by the mob and the police.
Tyler Perry's Duplicity
High-powered attorney Marley faces her most personal case yet when she is tasked with uncovering the truth behind the murder of her best friend Fela’s husband. With the help of her boyfriend – a former cop turned private investigator – Marley’s search for what really happened leads her down a treacherous maze of deception and betrayal.
Anniversary
When Ellen and Paul’s son Josh introduces his new girlfriend at their 25th anniversary party, no one suspects that it is the beginning of the end for this happy family. The new girlfriend is Liz, Ellen’s former student, who left the university, some years before, after Ellen called her out in class for her radical ideology.
Bosco
Based on the true story of Quawntay “Bosco” Adams. Sentenced to 35 years for attempted possession of marijuana, Adams miraculously escaped from a Federal maximum-security prison while under 24-hour surveillance in solitary confinement with the help of an older woman he met through a lonely-hearts ad.
The Hummingbird Project
A pair of high-frequency traders go up against their old boss in an effort to make millions in a fiber-optic cable deal.
Backstabbing for Beginners
An idealistic young employee at the U.N. investigates the grisly murder of his predecessor – and uncovers a vast global conspiracy that may involve his own boss.
Tatami
Iranian female judokas Leila and her coach Maryam, travel to the Judo World Championship, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. Midway through the Judo World Championships, they receive an ultimatum from the Islamic Republic ordering Leila to fake an injury and lose, or she will be branded a traitor of the state. With her own and her family’s freedom at stake, Leila is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the Iranian regime as her coach Maryam implores her to do, or fight on, for the gold.
Kandahar
After his mission is exposed, an undercover CIA operative stuck deep in hostile territory in Afghanistan must fight his way out, alongside his Afghan translator, to an extraction point in Kandahar, all whilst avoiding elite enemy forces and foreign spies tasked with hunting them down.
All the Devils Are Here
After a heist, four criminals lay low in a remote safehouse, waiting for orders. As paranoia builds, one thing becomes clear — the real threat may not be outside, but among them.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with The Operative (2019): 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 The Operative.
See full details for The Operative (2019)