Best movies like Chinatown

Similar in 90%

Harper (1966)

Plot Summary:

Harper is a cynical private eye in the best tradition of Bogart. He even has Bogie's Baby hiring him to find her missing husband, getting involved along the way with an assortment of unsavory characters and an illegal-alien smuggling ring.

Similar in 84%

The Two Jakes (1990)

Plot Summary:

This sequel to the classic Chinatown finds private detective Jake Gittes still haunted from the events of the first film. Hired by a man to investigate his wife's infidelities, Jake once again finds himself involved in a complicated plot involving murder, oil, and even some ghosts from his past.

Similar in 89%

Blow-Up (1966)

Plot Summary:

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he accidentally captures on film the commission of a murder. The fact that he has photographed a murder does not occur to him until he studies and then blows up his negatives, uncovering details, blowing up smaller and smaller elements, and finally putting the puzzle together.

Similar in 85%

The Killers (1964)

Plot Summary:

A hit man and his partner try to find out why their latest victim, a former race-car driver, did not try to get away.

Similar in 88%

Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Plot Summary:

Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by paroled convict Moose Malloy to find his girlfriend Velma, former seedy nightclub dancer.

Similar in 89%

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Plot Summary:

Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

Similar in 75%

Frantic (1988)

Plot Summary:

Ford plays an American doctor whose wife suddenly vanishes in Paris. To find her, he navigates a puzzling web of language, locale, laissez-faire cops, triplicate-form filling bureaucrats and a defiant, mysterious waif who knows more than she tells.

Similar in 85%

The Parallax View (1974)

Plot Summary:

An ambitious reporter, investigating a senator's assassination, realizes witnesses to the shooting are systematically dying and discovers a multi-million dollar corporation which serves as a front for the recruitment of political assassins.

Similar in 84%

Klute (1971)

Plot Summary:

This acclaimed thriller stars Jane Fonda as Bree Daniel, a New York City call girl who becomes enmeshed in an investigation into the disappearance of a business executive. Detective John Klute is hired to follow Daniel, and eventually begins a romance with her, but it appears that he hasn't been the only person on her trail. When it becomes clear that Daniel is being targeted, it's up to her and Klute to figure out who is after her before it's too late.

Similar in 84%

Blow Out (1981)

Plot Summary:

Jack Terry is a master sound recordist who works on grade-B horror movies. Late one evening, he is recording sounds for use in his movies when he hears something unexpected through his sound equipment and records it. Curiosity gets the better of him when the media become involved, and he begins to unravel the pieces of a nefarious conspiracy. As he struggles to survive against his shadowy enemies and expose the truth, he does not know whom he can trust.

Similar in 88%

Inherent Vice (2014)

Plot Summary:

In Los Angeles at the turn of the 1970s, drug-fueled detective Larry "Doc" Sportello investigates the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend.

Similar in 83%

The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)

Plot Summary:

A retired legal counselor writes a novel hoping to find closure for one of his past unresolved homicide cases and for his unreciprocated love with his superior - both of which still haunt him decades later.

Similar in 80%

Arlington Road (1999)

Plot Summary:

Threats from sinister foreign nationals aren't the only thing to fear. Bedraggled college professor Michael Faraday has been vexed (and increasingly paranoid) since his wife's accidental death in a botched FBI operation. But all that takes a backseat when a seemingly all-American couple set up house next door.

Similar in 81%

Night Moves (1975)

Plot Summary:

Private detective and former football player Harry Moseby gets hired on to what seems a standard missing person case, as a former Hollywood actress whose only major roles came thanks to being married to a studio mogul wants Moseby to find and return her daughter. Harry travels to Florida to find her, but he begins to see a connection between the runaway girl, the world of Hollywood stuntmen, and a suspicious mechanic when an unsolved murder comes to light.

Similar in 83%

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Plot Summary:

In late 1940s Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is an unemployed black World War II veteran with few job prospects. At a bar, Easy meets DeWitt Albright, a mysterious white man looking for someone to investigate the disappearance of a missing white woman named Daphne Monet, who he suspects is hiding out in one of the city's black jazz clubs. Strapped for money and facing house payments, Easy takes the job, but soon finds himself in over his head.

Similar in 85%

Mulholland Falls (1996)

Plot Summary:

In 1950s Los Angeles, a special crime squad of the LAPD investigates the murder of a young woman.

Similar in 87%

Blue Velvet (1986)

Plot Summary:

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 criminals who have kidnapped her child.

Similar in 79%

Brick (2005)

Plot Summary:

A teenage loner pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend.

Similar in 81%

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Plot Summary:

A bookish CIA researcher finds all his co-workers dead, and must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust.

Similar in 80%

Blood Simple (1984)

Plot Summary:

The owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.

Similar in 86%

Mystic River (2003)

Plot Summary:

A story about friendship and loyalty, guilt and vengeance, and the fateful affect the past has on the present.

Similar in 84%

Angel Heart (1987)

Plot Summary:

The down-and-out private detective Harry Angel is ordered, by a mysterious man named Louis Cyphre, to go on a mission to find a missing person. His routine failure soon leads to a bloody spar with himself as Harry Angel goes on a supernatural journey into his own soul.

Similar in 87%

The Game (1997)

Plot Summary:

In honor of his birthday, San Francisco banker Nicholas Van Orton, a financial genius and a coldhearted loner, receives an unusual present from his younger brother, Conrad -- a gift certificate to play a unique kind of game. In nearly a nanosecond, Nicholas finds himself consumed by a dangerous set of ever-changing rules, unable to distinguish where the charade ends and reality begins.

Similar in 90%

Memento (2000)

Plot Summary:

Suffering short-term memory loss after a head injury, Leonard Shelby embarks on a grim quest to find the lowlife who murdered his wife in this gritty, complex thriller that packs more knots than a hangman's noose. To carry out his plan, Shelby snaps Polaroids of people and places, jotting down contextual notes on the backs of photos to aid in his search and jog his memory. He even tattoos his own body in a desperate bid to remember.

Similar in 84%

L.A. Confidential (1997)

Plot Summary:

Three detectives in the corrupt and brutal L.A. police force of the 1950s use differing methods to uncover a conspiracy behind the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner.

Similar in 88%

Inside Man (2006)

Plot Summary:

Bank robber Dalton Russell enters a Manhattan bank, locks the doors and takes hostages, working methodically and without haste. Detective Frazier is assigned to negotiate, but his mind is occupied with the corruption charges he is facing. With an army of police surrounding the bank, the thief, the cop and a high-profile 'fixer' enter high-stakes negotiations.

Similar in 81%

Insomnia (2002)

Plot Summary:

Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.

Similar in 89%

The Departed (2006)

Plot Summary:

To take down South Boston's Irish Mafia, the police send in one of their own to infiltrate the underworld, not realizing the syndicate has done likewise. While an undercover cop curries favor with the mob kingpin, a career criminal rises through the police ranks. But both sides soon discover there's a mole among them.

Similar in 79%

Se7en (1995)

Plot Summary:

Two homicide detectives are on a desperate hunt for a serial killer whose crimes are based on the "seven deadly sins" in this dark and haunting film that takes viewers from the tortured remains of one victim to the next. The seasoned Det. Sommerset researches each sin in an effort to get inside the killer's mind, while his novice partner, Mills, scoffs at his efforts to unravel the case.

Similar in 88%

Shutter Island (2010)

Plot Summary:

World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by his troubling visions and also by a mysterious doctor.