Best movies like Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Former Yakuza underling Kiryu Kazuma, who has recently been released from prison after a lengthy incarceration, and is trying to piece his life together and distance himself from his Yakuza past. Unfortunately Kiryu's problems slowly escalate as he is pursued by a former associate, the baseball bat-wielding psycho Majima Goro who has a grudge to settle with Kiryu.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan, South Korea
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: exciting, tense, captivating, suspense, heroic, crime drama, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Best tv shows and movies like Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2007):
Similar in 88%
Black Angel Vol. 1 (1998)
Plot Summary:
Tokyo is a dark technopolis, a city of faceless chrome and cold marble. It is ruled by Nogi, a yakuza boss specializing in drugs and murder. He gained absolute power by executing the former boss and marrying his daughter, Chiaki. Only the mysterious Ikko, Chiaki's half-sister threatens him. Inspired by a legendary hit-woman, Ikko calls herself the Black Angel and plans to wash away her father's murderer with a deluge of blood.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 912
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Japan
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: neo noir, crime drama, exciting, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, stylized
Similar in 80%
Story of a Wild Elder Sister: Widespread Lynch Law (1973)
Plot Summary:
Ocho is accidentally captured by a drug trafficking cartel who use Chinese women to smuggle drugs into Japan by hiding it in their vaginas. She is tortured, and manages to escape, fighting both the male yakuzas and a gang of female thieves.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 920
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Japan
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, disturbing, controversial, serious, realistic, suspenseful, suspense, cult film
Similar in 84%
Yakuza-Busting Girls: Duel in Hell (2010)
Plot Summary:
Asami returns exhausted after three years of intense training to become a yakuza hunter. She decides to visit her old master, Inokuma, who runs a bar. However, she finds his place in ruins and nothing is as it was when she left. As it turns out, the local yakuza had turned it into a gambling house and laid claim to the entire area with the help of a cold-blooded killer named Akira. Akira is relentless, and utilizes cruel tactics when anyone dares get in her way.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 118
Genere: Action
Country: Japan
Duration: 73 min
Plot tags: exciting, stylized, tense, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, splatter
Similar in 81%
Return of the Street Fighter (1974)
Plot Summary:
Martial artist Takuma Tsurugi returns to take on a Yakuza family that may be embezzling money from charities to finance their own operations. Both the police and the Yakuza find themselves battling Tsurugi, but Tsurugi's fight ultimately is with the mob, and he concentrates on them.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, disturbing, crime drama, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, fast, psychotronic, independent film
Similar in 81%
Open City (2008)
Plot Summary:
Jo Dae-yeong is a police officer investigating a pickpocket ring with ties to the Yakuza. One day he rescues Baek Jang-mi from danger, only to discover that she is the boss of the gang he has been tracking.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 846
Genere: Action, Crime
Country: South Korea
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: exciting, tense, rough, suspenseful, serious, realistic, stylized
Similar in 79%
Graveyard of Honor (1975)
Plot Summary:
A look at the life of renegade yakuza, Rikio Ishikawa, particularly the years from 1946 to 1950 when his violent antics get him in trouble with his own clan, Kawada, and then with the clan of his protector, Kozaburo Imai. In these years, he can rely on Chieko, a young Tokyo courtesan who gives him shelter. He's banished to Osaka, where he picks up a drug habit. Through it all, he keeps his friends and enemies off balance with unpredictable behavior - and he seems indestructible.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Action, Crime
Country: Japan
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: crime drama, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful, stylized, gloomy
Similar in 90%
The Wolves (1971)
Plot Summary:
After going to prison for killing the boss of the Kanno gang, Seji Iwahashi (Tatsuya Nakadai) gets released early -- only to find that his former gang has merged with the Kannos. But with bitter resentments lingering on both sides, how long will it be before the bloodshed begins anew? Set in 1926 Japan, this serpentine crime thriller from director Hideo Gosha also stars Toshio Kurosawa and Isao Natsuyagi as Iwahashi's closest ally.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 612
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: crime drama, atmospheric, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, stylized
Similar in 77%
Shinjuku Incident (2009)
Plot Summary:
Iron Zhao aka Steelhead, a truck repairman from China's Northeast, and settles down as an illegal immigrant in Tokyo. After a series of run-ins with the Yakuza, he rises to power as the Don of Chinese illegal immigrants. However, things get out of control when he's foolish enough to believe in clean getaways in a world that offers none, and soon comes to seal his own fate.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Hong Kong
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: tense, rough, serious, realistic, neo noir, bloody, crime drama, cult classic, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 86%
The Five (1995)
Plot Summary:
Five men plot to steal a large sum of money from the local yakuza, but everything does not go as planned and the men find themselves hunted down by contract killers.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Action, Drama, Crime
Country: Japan
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: neo noir, crime drama, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, stylized, tragic ending, gay cinema
Similar in 80%
The Woman Sharper (1963)
Plot Summary:
Handsome young Katsuta tries to follow the yakuza code, but even his boss doesn't believe in it. Diamond Fuyu is less ethical, and allows the idiotic Tetsu to trick a schoolgirl he fancies, Hanako, into a type of bonded prostitution. Because of gang conflict, the Izu family (to whom Katsuta belongs) has their last gambling den taken over, and he seeks revenge. This brings him back into contact with a former lover who is also a card trickster - she is also Diamond Fuyu's sister, and is now married to Okaru-Hachi, who has mastered a clever card cheating trick called Okaru, which involves the deft use of mirrors.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 426
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: offbeat, serious, realistic, suspenseful, stylized
Similar in 83%
Family (2001)
Plot Summary:
When the mobster Iwaida Nishikawi is executed by the hit man Takeshi, his family chases the killer. Takeshi's brothers Takashi and Hideshi Miwa try to find Takeshi, who is hidden with the nurse Rie Ishibashi, to protect him and Hideshi discovers that Takeshi was secretly sent by their Yakuza boss to eliminate Iwaida. Meanwhile, the mobster Kenmoshi abducts Takashi's wife Mariko and rapes her, trying to force Takashi to deliver his brother to him.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 296
Genere: Action, Crime
Country: Japan
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, serious, suspenseful, bloody, crime drama, realistic
Similar in 89%
The City of Lost Souls (2000)
Plot Summary:
Brazilian-Japanese gangster Mario rescues his Chinese girlfriend Kei as she's about to be deported from Japan. Desperate to escape, he hides in Tokyo's booming Japanese-Portuguese community and seeks passage from the country from a Russian mobster. To meet his price, they hold up a bigtime drug deal between the Chinese Mafia and the local Yakuza.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Japan
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: disturbing, atmospheric, harsh, exciting, rough, suspenseful, realistic, stylized, crime drama, serious
Similar in 87%
A Better Tomorrow (2010)
Plot Summary:
A Korean remake of the John Woo Classic. One brother is a criminal. One brother is a cop. Both will fight to the death.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: exciting, realistic, suspenseful, serious, suspense, heroic, crime drama, neo noir, fast
Similar in 90%
Sleepless Town (1998)
Plot Summary:
Kenichi is a half-Japanese, half-Chinese man of the underworld. You can sell him anything except children's organs. His domain is in Kabukicho, a gangland controlled by various Shanghai gangs intent on taking control. His former partner-in-crime, Fu-Chun, is rumored to have returned to Kabukicho, having fled years earlier after killing the number two of gangland boss, Yuan. Yuan wants to get even and attempts to do so by using Kenichi.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 700
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Hong Kong, Japan
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 81%
Graveyard of Honor (2002)
Plot Summary:
A barkeeper saves a Yakuza boss' life and thus makes his way up in the organization. However, his fear of nothing soon causes problems.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Action, Crime, Thriller
Country: Japan
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, bleak, realistic, bloody, hood, crime drama, weird
Similar in 85%
Tajomaru: Avenging Blade (2009)
Plot Summary:
TAJOMARU is the famous 'bandit' of the forest from RASHOMON. Whoever kills Tajomaru inherits his name, status and sword. A royal brother leaves his kingdom to protect the princess he loves, only to find a series of harrowing adventures along the way which lead him back to where he came from, and then disinheriting his past to become the bandit TAJOMARU.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 351
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, captivating, tense, suspense, realistic, stylized
Similar in 82%
The Last Tycoon (2012)
Plot Summary:
Set in Shanghais Gangster era of the early 1900s, THE LAST TYCOON tells the tale of CHENG (Chow Yun-Fat), a young man who is set up by the chief of police (Sammo Hung) and must leave the life he knows and QIU (Monica Mok), the woman he loves, to start again. After escaping prison CHENG quickly and violently moves his way up the ladder of Shanghais criminal underworld to become on the most powerful mob bosses in Shanghais history. But fame and notoriety take their toll when CHENG finds himself stuck between the looming Japanese army and the scheming local secret service. Matters are only made worse when he bumps into the love of his life QIU, along with her writer husband. Will love re-kindle in the dusk of an era?.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama
Country: Hong Kong, China
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, suspenseful, exciting, captivating, retro, heroic, crime drama, rough, realistic
Similar in 85%
Zatoichi: The Last (2010)
Plot Summary:
A blind master swordsman attempts to lead a quiet life with his wife but he is provoked back into battle.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 393
Genere: Action, Drama
Country: Japan, France
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, exciting, captivating, tense, rough, bleak, suspenseful, stylized, gloomy
Similar in 88%
Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (1989)
Plot Summary:
This 26th film installment of the Zatoichi series sees Shintaro Katsu return to this classic role after a 10 year hiatus. The blind masseur Ichi gets caught between rival Yakuza clans.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Action, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: cult classic, exciting, tense, atmospheric, rough, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, stylized
Similar in 83%
Rich and Famous (1987)
Plot Summary:
To pay off his debt as a gambler, a man drags his sister and step-brother into a life of crime and a violent war between rival gang lords.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 749
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Hong Kong
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: heroic, crime drama, cult classic, exciting, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 77%
Decisions (2011)
Plot Summary:
When a group of friends decide to pull a bank heist to get out from underneath their money troubles. They quickly discover that things can unravel in a hurry! A compromised LAPD Detective (Corey Haim) on the take with a crime syndicate figure want the money back and will go to any lengths to get it! Things go wrong quickly as bullets start to fly and the group finds that one thing affects another and discover that the voice of reason is not always what it appears to be.
IMDB Rating: 3.3
IMDB Votes: 273
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, suspenseful, captivating, exciting, independent film, rough, realistic
Similar in 77%
Bodyguard: A New Beginning (2008)
Plot Summary:
'A New Beginning' focuses around the story of Leung, the bodyguard of a Chinese Triad boss, Wong, to whom his loyalty is unrivaled. Living in Hong Kong, Wong requests that his bodyguard travel to the UK to protect a young British woman, whose true identity is known only by Wong himself. Even his own errant son, Yuen, is kept in the dark, which leads to a betrayal that threatens to destroy the family and all that his father has worked hard to protect.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 337
Genere: Action, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, captivating, suspense, crime drama, rough, realistic
Similar in 86%
Dead or Alive (1999)
Plot Summary:
Ryūichi and his small gang of Triad vie for control of the Japanese underworld in a crime-ridden Shinjuku quarter while Detective Jojima tries to bring it down. Jojima attempts to start a gang war between the Triad and yakuza. Ryūichi and Jojima meet.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Japan
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: disturbing, serious, suspenseful, surreal, controversial, stylized, mind bending, psychedelic, heroic, hood
Similar in 76%
Monga (2010)
Plot Summary:
Set in the 1980s, “Monga” centers on five boys (Mosquito, Monk, Dragon, White Monkey and A-Lan) who join the "Gang of Princes" who are tired of being pushed around. As the "Gang of Princes" rise in stature, they come into conflict with other gangs jealous of their rising power.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Taiwan
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: tense, realistic, exciting, serious, captivating, heroic, hood, rough, bleak, suspenseful
Similar in 81%
Dog Bite Dog (2006)
Plot Summary:
A young Cambodian man who has been trained to fight for money in his country is hired to kill someone in Hong Kong. He performs the hit and then flees from Hong Kong police, who are wrestling with internal problems of a model cop and his son, who is also on the force and who was told by his dad not to become a police officer. The father goes into a coma after being shot, and internal affairs suspects him of dealing drugs on the side. The assassin then befriends a young girl who is molested and abused by her father. They both plan to get back on a ship to Cambodia but have to get past Hong Kong police, who do everything they can to catch him.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Hong Kong, Japan
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: suspenseful, semi serious, tense, exciting, suspense, neo noir, heroic, disturbing, crime drama, twisted
Similar in 89%
Beyond Outrage (2012)
Plot Summary:
As the police launch a full-scale crackdown on organized crime, it ignites a national yakuza struggle between the Sanno of the East and Hanabishi of the West. What started as an internal strife in Outrage has now become a nationwide war in Outrage Beyond.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: tense, rough, serious, realistic, psychological, noir, neo noir, bloody, hood, crime thriller
Similar in 86%
Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973)
Plot Summary:
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, exciting, rough, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, stylized
Similar in 75%
The Outsider (2018)
Plot Summary:
A former American G.I. joins a yakuza family after his release from prison in post-World War II Osaka.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 28000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: suspense, realistic, tense, serious, suspenseful, intense, scenic, crime thriller
Similar in 80%
Outrage Coda (2017)
Plot Summary:
Ôtomo gets involved with new Yakuza battles after he comes back the Yakuza society.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: exciting, tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing, neo noir, hood
Similar in 75%
Baseline (2010)
Plot Summary:
The Baseline is the centre of the East London grime club scene and the queue regularly stretches around the block. Danny works on the door - breaking up fights and managing drunk kids. However, when he rescues Terry, the club owner and local gang leader, from a hitman, Danny is suddenly plunged deep into an underworld he had tried so hard to avoid. Danny is promoted to manager, but only on the condition that he turns a blind eye to the shady goings on both on and off the dance-floor. Danny and his girlfriend Jessica dream of setting up their own club, but Danny is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice when he has to choose between loyalty, morality and his own dreams of escape.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 647
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: serious, suspenseful, captivating, exciting, tense, rough, realistic