Best movies like The Harder They Come

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The Five Heartbeats (1991)

Plot Summary:

In the early 1960's, a quintet of hopeful, young African-American men form an amateur vocal group called The Five Heartbeats. After an initially rocky start, the group improves, turns pro, and rises to become a top flight music sensation. Along the way, however, the guys learn many hard lessons about the reality of the music industry.

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Tsotsi (2005)

Plot Summary:

The South African multi-award winning film about a young South African boy from the ghetto named Tsotsi, meaning Gangster. Tsotsi, who left home as a child to get away from helpless parents, finds a baby in the back seat of a car that he has just stolen. He decides that it his responsibility to take care of the baby and in the process learns that maybe the gangster life isn’t the best way.

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Hate (1995)

Plot Summary:

Aimlessly whiling away their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz, Hubert, and Said -- a Jew, African, and an Arab -- give human faces to France's immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their social marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. La Haine means Hate.

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The Mack (1973)

Plot Summary:

Goldie returns from five years at the state pen and winds up king of the pimping game. Trouble comes in the form of two corrupt white cops and a crime lord who wants him to return to the small time.

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Shottas (2002)

Plot Summary:

A raw urban drama about two friends raised on the dangerous streets of Kingston, Jamaica. Biggs and Wayne take on the "Shotta" way of life to survive. As young boys, they begin a life of crime, eventually moving to the US where they begin a ruthless climb from the bottom. They remain bound to each other by their shottas loyalty as they aggressively take control of the Jamaican underworld.

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Yardie (2018)

Plot Summary:

Jamaica, 1973. When a young boy witnesses his brother’s assassination, a powerful Don gives him a home. But 10 years later, when he’s sent to London, his past catches up to him.

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Adulthood (2008)

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

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Gang Tapes (2001)

Plot Summary:

When a brutal carjacking yields a videocamera, a teenage boy decides to document his life and the lives of his fellow gangbangers.

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Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema (2008)

Plot Summary:

This South African movie tracks the rise of a once-petty criminal to the heights of the criminal underworld. After cutting his teeth on hijacking, before moving onto bigger game, an ambitious man hits a setback when most of his gang are shot.

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New Jersey Drive (1995)

Plot Summary:

New Jersey Drive is a 1995 film about black youths in Newark, New Jersey, the unofficial "car theft capital of the world". Their favorite pastime is that of everybody in their neighborhood: stealing cars and joyriding. The trouble starts when they steal a police car and the cops launch a violent offensive that involves beating and even shooting suspects.

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Turn It Up (2000)

Plot Summary:

Trying to bootstrap his way out of Brooklyn's mean streets is Diamond, a rap musician. With his long-time pal Gage acting as his manager, he's trying to lay down a demo tape with cut-rate studio time. To pay the bills, he and Gage run drugs for "Mr. B." Inside a week, Diamond's beloved mother dies suddenly, his father appears after an absence of 12 years and wants a relationship, and his girlfriend Kia tells him she's pregnant, asking him if he's ready to be a father. Gage steals $100,000 in a multiple-felony robbery so that Diamond can record a full album, not knowing it's Mr. B's money he's taken. B wants his money, Diamond wants his music, Tia wants an answer.

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Belly (1998)

Plot Summary:

Tommy Brown 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?.

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Boyz n the Hood (1991)

Plot Summary:

Boyz n the Hood is the popular and successful film and social criticism from John Singleton about the conditions in South Central Los Angeles where teenagers are involved in gun fights and drug dealing on a daily basis.

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Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005)

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A tale of an inner city drug dealer who turns away from crime to pursue his passion, rap music.

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South Central (1992)

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A man is put to prison for 10 years. Coming out of prison he wants to live a normal life and stop with crime but his son has yet followed the criminal path of his father.

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8 Mile (2002)

Plot Summary:

The setting is Detroit in 1995. The city is divided by 8 Mile, a road that splits the town in half along racial lines. A young white rapper, Jimmy "B-Rabbit" Smith Jr. summons strength within himself to cross over these arbitrary boundaries to fulfill his dream of success in hip hop. With his pal Future and the three one third in place, all he has to do is not choke.

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Hustle & Flow (2005)

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With help from his friends, a Memphis pimp in a mid-life crisis attempts to become a successful hip-hop emcee.

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City of God (2002)

Plot Summary:

Cidade de Deus is a shantytown that started during the 1960s and became one of Rio de Janeiro’s most dangerous places in the beginning of the 1980s. To tell the story of this place, the movie describes the life of various characters, all seen by the point of view of the narrator, Buscapé. Buscapé was raised in a very violent environment. Despite the feeling that all odds were against him, he finds out that life can be seen with other eyes.

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The Cotton Club (1984)

Plot Summary:

The story of the people that frequented Harlem's famous nightclubs, 'The Cotton Club', and those that ran it.

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Sucker Free City (2004)

Plot Summary:

The film follows three young men as they are drawn into lives of crime. Nick (Crowley) uses his entry-level corporate job to commit credit card fraud and deals drugs on the side. K-Luv (Mackie) is a member of the "V-Dubs", an African-American street gang. Lincoln (Leung) is a rising figure in the Chinese mafia. Gentrification forces Nick's family to move out of their home in the Mission District into Hunter's Point where they are harassed by the V-Dubs. K-Luv's side business of selling bootleg compact discs leads him to enlist Nick's help to bootleg CDs and to negotiate a truce with Lincoln. Lincoln conducts an affair with his boss' daughter Angela (Carpio), a Stanford student engaged to a medical student classmate.

IMDB Rating: 6.7

IMDB Votes: 1000

Genere: Crime, Drama

Country: USA

Duration: 113 min

Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, tense, bleak, crime drama