Movies Like Bus 174
If you loved Bus 174's Documentary 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

Elite Squad
In 1997, before the visit of the pope to Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento from BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) is assigned to eliminate the risks of the drug dealers in a dangerous slum nearby where the pope intends to be lodged.

Vitória
Nina is an elderly woman who lives alone and feels distressed by the increasing violence in her neighborhood. Amidst conflicts with her neighbors, she decides to film the movement of drug traffickers from her window, hoping to assist the police. After months of recording suspicious activities, her initiative attracts the attention of a journalist, who approaches Nina and offers to support her in her mission.

City of God
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.

Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey
On the night she plans on taking her own life, 17-year-old 'Lisa McVey' is kidnapped and finds herself fighting to stay alive and is raped. She manages to talk her attacker into releasing her, but when she returns home, no one believes her story except for one detective, who suspects she was abducted by a serial killer. Based on horrifying true events.

The Equalizer 3
Robert McCall finds himself at home in Southern Italy but he discovers his friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends' protector by taking on the mafia.

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.


Breaking In
Shaun Russell takes her son and daughter on a weekend getaway to her late father's secluded, high-tech vacation home in the countryside. The family soon gets an unwelcome surprise when four men break into the house to find hidden money. After managing to escape, Shaun must now figure out a way to turn the tables on the desperate thieves and save her captive children.
More Movies Like Bus 174

The Girl Who Escaped: The Kara Robinson Story
Based on a true story. 15-year-old Kara Robinson was kidnapped, assaulted and held captive for 18 hours. With her survival instincts kicking in, she plots a daring escape from the serial killer and leads police to his apartment.

Con Mum
A chef's life is upended when a jet-setting, champagne-sipping, hotel-hopping woman claims to be his long-lost mother. This documentary reveals the untold story.

The Secret Agent
Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. Hoping to reunite with his son, he travels to Recife during Carnival but soon realizes that the city is not the safe haven he was expecting.

A Perfect World
A kidnapped boy strikes up a friendship with his captor: an escaped convict on the run from the law, headed by an honorable U.S. Marshal.

Class of 1984
Andy is a new teacher at an inner city high school that is unlike any he has seen before. There are metal detectors at the front door and the place is basically run by a tough kid named Peter Stegman. Soon, Andy and Stegman become enemies and Stegman will stop at nothing to protect his turf and drug dealing business.

Night Always Comes
Facing eviction in a city her family can no longer afford, a woman plunges into a desperate and increasingly dangerous all-night search to raise $25,000.

Cool Hand Luke
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.

The Principal
Burglary. Drugs. Assault. Rape. The students at Brandel High are more than new Principal Rick Latimer bargained for. Gangs fight to control the school using knives - even guns - when they have to. When Latimer and the head of security try to clean up the school and stop the narcotics trade, they run up against a teenage mafia. A violent confrontation on the campus leads to a deadly showdown with the drug dealer's gang, and one last chance for Latimer to save his career... and his life.

American Murder: The Family Next Door
Using raw, firsthand footage, this documentary examines the disappearance of Shanann Watts and her children, and the terrible events that followed.

Don't Breathe
A group of teens break into a blind man's home thinking they'll get away with the perfect crime. They're wrong.

The Hate U Give
Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two very different worlds as she tries to speak her truth.

The Equalizer 2
Robert McCall, who serves an unflinching justice for the exploited and oppressed, embarks on a relentless, globe-trotting quest for vengeance when his former partner is murdered.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Bus 174 (2002): Documentary 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 Bus 174.
See full details for Bus 174 (2002)