Best movies like The Man Standing Next
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
In the 1970s, Korea is under the absolute control of the President Park who controls the KCIA, the organization with an edge over any branch of government. The director of KCIA, KIM Gyu-pyeong, is the seemingly most prospective second-in-command. In the midst of reign of fear, a former KCIA director, PARK Yong-gak who knows all about the government’s obscure operations, exiles to the U.S. where the investigation of ‘Koreagate’ is underway. As the tension escalates, the stifling political maneuvering by the all second-in-command’s unfolds.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: suspense, suspenseful, psychological, bad ending
Best tv shows and movies like The Man Standing Next (2020):
Similar in 80%
Rabin, the Last Day (2015)
Plot Summary:
Itzhak Rabin's murder ended all efforts of peace, and with him the whole left wing of Israel died. The movie shows the last of his days as prime minister, and what led to his murder.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 439
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Israel, France
Duration: 153 min
Plot tags: suspense, unusual plot structure, political, suspenseful, visually appealing
Similar in 90%
The Age of Shadows (2016)
Plot Summary:
Set in the late 1920s, The Age of Shadows follows the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Action, History, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: psychological thriller, noir, suspense, art house, costume drama, neo noir
Similar in 87%
Since (1966)
Plot Summary:
Andy Warhol's experimental reconstruction of the assassination of the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, which serves as his critical commentary on the way the media presented the tragic event.
IMDB Rating: 4.7
IMDB Votes: 16
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 67 min
Plot tags: experimental
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Similar in 90%
The Net (2016)
Plot Summary:
A poor North Korean fisherman finds himself an accidental defector, and is groomed to be a spy by an ambitious South Korean military officer.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: exciting, thought provoking, bleak, captivating, suspense, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 79%
Hunt (2022)
Plot Summary:
After a high-ranking North Korean official requests asylum, KCIA Foreign Unit chief Park Pyong-ho and Domestic Unit chief Kim Jung-do are tasked with uncovering a North Korean spy, known as Donglim, who is deeply embedded within their agency. When the spy begins leaking top secret intel that could jeopardize national security, the two units are each assigned to investigate each other.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: surprise ending
Similar in 83%
438 Days (2019)
Plot Summary:
On the eve of June 28th, 2011 Swedish journalists Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson put everything at stake by illegally crossing the border from Somalia into Ethiopia. After months of research, planning and failed attempts, they were finally on their way to report on how the ruthless hunt for oil effected the population of the isolated and conflict-ridden Ogaden region. Five days later they lay wounded in the desert sand, shot and captured by the Ethiopian army. But when their initial reportage died, another story began. A story about lawlessness, propaganda and global politics. After a Kafkaesque trial they were sentenced to eleven years in prison for terrorism. And they were far from alone. Their cellmates were journalists, writers and politicians persecuted for not bowing down to dictatorship. Their reportage about oil was transformed into a story about ink, and their daily lives turned into a fight for survival inside the notorious Kality prison in Addis Ababa.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: Sweden
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: suspense, tense, rough, thought provoking, captivating, suspenseful, disturbing, exciting
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An Officer and a Spy (2019)
Plot Summary:
In 1894, French Captain Alfred Dreyfus is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's Island.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 21000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: costume drama, political, suspense, art film, psychological, tense, captivating, disturbing, period drama
Similar in 87%
Plan A (2021)
Plot Summary:
Germany 1945, Max, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, meets a radical group of Jewish resistance fighters, who, like him, lost all hope for their future after they were robbed of their existence and their entire families were killed by the Nazis. They dream of retaliation on an epic scale for the Jewish people. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Max starts identifying with the group's monstrous plans.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Germany, Israel
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, emotional, suspense, suspenseful, disturbing
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1987: When the Day Comes (2017)
Plot Summary:
In 1987 Korea, under an oppressive military regime, a college student gets killed during a police interrogation involving torture. Government of officials are quick to cover up the death and order the body to be cremated. A prosecutor who is supposed to sign the cremation release, raises questions about a 21-year-old kid dying of a heart attack, and he begins looking into the case for truth. Despite a systematic attempt to silence everyone involved in the case, the truth gets out, causing an eruption of public outrage.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, sincere, captivating, suspense, disturbing, social, banned
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Backstabbing for Beginners (2018)
Plot Summary:
An idealistic young employee at the U.N. investigates the grizzly murder of his predecessor – and uncovers a vast global conspiracy that may involve his own boss.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, History, Mystery, Romance, Thriller
Country: Denmark, Canada, USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: suspenseful, disturbing, cynical, tense, captivating, suspense
Similar in 86%
The President's Last Bang (2005)
Plot Summary:
On October 26, 1979, President Park Chung-hee, who had ruled South Korea since 1961, was assassinated by his director of intelligence. The film depicts the events of that night….
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, History, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, serious, realistic, captivating, black comedy, neo noir, political, offbeat, biting, suspense
Similar in 89%
Steel Rain (2017)
Plot Summary:
A former agent from the North Korean intelligence and a senior member of the South Korean security services conduct a secret mission to prevent the breakout of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 139 min
Plot tags: suspense, political thriller, psychological, tense, captivating, political, scenic, perverse
Similar in 82%
Inside Men (2015)
Plot Summary:
LEE Kang-hee, an editorialist of the influential conservative newspaper puts a congressman, JANG Pil-woo to the position of a leading candidate for President using the power of the press. Behind this, there was his secret deal with the paper’s biggest sponsor. AHN Sang-goo, a political henchman who supported LEE and JANG gets his hand cut as the price when he gets caught pocketing the record on the sponsor’s slush fund. WOO Jang-hoon, an ambitious prosecutor starts to investigate the relationship with JANG and the sponsor believing it is the only chance he can make it to the top. While getting down to the grass roots on the case, WOO meets AHN who has been deliberately planning his revenge. Now the war among the one blind for power, the one hell bent for vengeance, and the one eager for success starts.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: neo noir, psychological, serious, captivating, suspense, realistic, suspenseful, noir, crime thriller
Similar in 85%
J.S.A.: Joint Security Area (2000)
Plot Summary:
In the DMZ separating North and South Korea, two North Korean soldiers have been killed, supposedly by one South Korean soldier. But the 11 bullets found in the bodies, together with the 5 remaining bullets in the assassin's magazine clip, amount to 16 bullets for a gun that should normally hold 15 bullets. The investigating Swiss/Swedish team from the neutral countries overseeing the DMZ suspects that another, unknown party was involved - all of which points to some sort of cover up. The truth is much simpler and much more tragic.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 33000
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller, War
Country: South Korea
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: tense, enigmatic, political, tricky, thought provoking, suspenseful, bleak, touching, realistic, suspense
Similar in 78%
Steel Rain 2 (2020)
Plot Summary:
A futuristic film about a crisis near the brink of war after three leaders are kidnapped by a North Korean nuclear submarine in a coup d’état during a summit between the two Koreas and the United States.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, captivating, suspense, political thriller
Similar in 79%
Operation Chromite (2016)
Plot Summary:
A squad of soldiers fight in the Korean War's crucial Battle of Incheon.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Action, Drama, History, War
Country: South Korea
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: psychological, exciting, suspense, suspenseful
Similar in 87%
Fatwa (2006)
Plot Summary:
In the midst of a personal crisis, junior senator Maggie Davidson (Holly) ascertains that she's the subject of a terrorist plot.
IMDB Rating: 3.8
IMDB Votes: 482
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, psychological, suspense, independent film, serious, realistic, suspenseful
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Triple Agent (2004)
Plot Summary:
The Popular Front wins elections, the Spanish Civil War begins, and Hitler and Stalin are manipulating and spying. The brilliant exile, Fiodor Voronin, a general at 20, is the deputy at the White Russian Military Union, probably slated to replace the aging Général Dobrinsky soon. Fiodor's Greek wife, Arsinoé, paints and stays away from politics, befriending Communist neighbors. Her health declines; the attentive Fiodor arranges care and, against the backdrop of Stalin's Great Purge, considers his options. He plays a chess game in which love of country, love of Arsinoé, ideology, petty jealousies, and the machinations of power roil in matters of life and death.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Russia
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspense, enigmatic, psychological
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The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019)
Plot Summary:
Sudan, East Africa, 1980. A team of Israeli Mossad agents plans to rescue and transfer thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. To do so, and to avoid raising suspicions from the inquisitive and ruthless authorities, they establish as a cover a fake diving resort by the Red Sea.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 32000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Canada
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: rough, suspense, suspenseful, non-linear, brutal, powerful
Similar in 84%
Masquerade (2012)
Plot Summary:
During the confusing and conspiratorial Joseon Dynasty King Gwang-hae orders his councilor, HEO Kyun, to find him a double in order to avoid the constant threat of assassination. HEO Kyun finds Ha-sun, a jester who looks remarkably like the king, and just as feared, Gwang-hae is poisoned. HEO Kyun proposes Ha-sun fill the role as the king until Gwang-hae recovers fully and grooms Ha-sun to look and act every bit the king. While assuming the role of the king at his first official appearance, Ha-sun begins to ponder the intricacies of the problems debated in his court. Being fundamentally more humanitarian than Gwang-hae, Ha-sun’s affection and appreciation of even the most minor servants slowly changes morale in the castle for the better. However, his chief opposition, PARK, notices the sudden shift in the king’s behavior and starts to ask questions.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: South Korea
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: suspenseful, captivating, realistic, stylized, inspirational, serious, period drama, mad
Similar in 88%
May 18 (2007)
Plot Summary:
The citizens of Gwangju lead a relatively peaceful life, until one day the military takes over the city, accusing the residents of conspiracy and claiming that they are communist sympathisers preparing a revolution against the current government. Seeing as the soldiers beat defenceless people, mainly students, to death, the citizens are in for retaliation and form a militia.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: South Korea
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, touching, disturbing
Similar in 76%
Kingmaker (2022)
Plot Summary:
Dreaming of changing the world, SEO Chang-dae takes part in KIM Woon-bum’s political campaign. To resist the current dictatorial ruling party, SEO adopts a very aggressive propaganda campaign, and it makes KIM become the strongest candidate in the opposition party. When ambitious SEO believes that unjustified means is necessary for politics, KIM has a firm belief that it is not real politics. While their conflict deepens, the ruling party secretly contacts SEO to win the next presidential election.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 721
Genere: Drama, History
Country: South Korea
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing, political
Similar in 89%
The Mayor (2017)
Plot Summary:
For the first time in Korean history, the mayor of Seoul attempts a third term in office, with his entire campaign team ready to soil their hands.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 463
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, political, disturbing
Similar in 85%
The Throne (2015)
Plot Summary:
Ancient Korea, July 4, 1762. The Crown Prince Hyojang, posthumously named Sado, son of King Yeongjo of Joseon, is accused of treason. Thus, the king asks him to commit suicide, but his closest vassals prevent it, so the king orders the prince to get inside a wooden rice chest, where he suffers deprivation of food and water.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: South Korea
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, captivating, psychological, serious, political, historical romance, period drama
Similar in 75%
The Missiles of October (1974)
Plot Summary:
Based in part on Robert F. Kennedy's book, "Thirteen Days," this film profiles the Kennedy Administration's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: political, tense, thought provoking, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 81%
Thirteen Days (2000)
Plot Summary:
Dramatisation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the nuclear standoff with the USSR sparked by the discovery by the Americans of missle bases established on the Soviet allied island of Cuba. Shown from the perspective of the US President, John F Kennedy, his staff and advisors.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 62000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 145 min
Plot tags: tense, political, suspenseful, thought provoking, disturbing, sincere, realistic, educational, witty, serious
Similar in 76%
JFK (1991)
Plot Summary:
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison discovers there's more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 167000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: USA, France
Duration: 189 min
Plot tags: controversial, suspense, political, captivating, disturbing, tense, political thriller, factual, suspenseful, talky
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All the President's Men (1976)
Plot Summary:
In the run-up to the 1972 elections, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward covers what seems to be a minor break-in at the Democratic Party National headquarters. He is surprised to find top lawyers already on the defense case, and the discovery of names and addresses of Republican fund organizers on the accused further arouses his suspicions. The editor of the Post is prepared to run with the story and assigns Woodward and Carl Bernstein to it. They find the trail leading higher and higher in the Republican Party, and eventually into the White House itself.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 124000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: political thriller, political, cerebral, realistic, serious, suspense, factual, tense, captivating, neo noir
Similar in 77%
The Last King of Scotland (2006)
Plot Summary:
Young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan decides it's time for an adventure after he finishes his formal education, so he decides to try his luck in Uganda, and arrives during the downfall of President Obote. General Idi Amin comes to power and asks Garrigan to become his personal doctor.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 194000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Thriller
Country: UK, Germany
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: political, factual, suspense, harsh, psychological, brutal, bloody, rough, suspenseful, serious
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The Good Shepherd (2006)
Plot Summary:
Edward Wilson, the only witness to his father's suicide and member of the Skull and Bones Society while a student at Yale, is a morally upright young man who values honor and discretion, qualities that help him to be recruited for a career in the newly founded OSS. His dedication to his work does not come without a price though, leading him to sacrifice his ideals and eventually his family.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 107000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 167 min
Plot tags: tense, realistic, suspense, political, factual, serious, suspenseful, rough, political thriller, emotional