Movies like River Patrol (1948)
The best movies like River Patrol (1948) are All Souls (2023), Contraband (2012) and Paradise Highway (2022). If River Patrol hooked you with its thriller, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedProtector (2026)8.4/10 from 648 votes
- NewestWardriver (2026)Released 2026
All Souls (2023)
A young confidential informant is sent on a dangerous undercover operation. It's a no-holds-barred look at the vulnerable foot soldiers of the War on Drugs, young criminals who are pressured to work for the police.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisContraband (2012)
When his brother-in-law runs afoul of a drug lord, family man Chris Farraday turns to a skill he abandoned long ago—smuggling—to repay the debt. But the job goes wrong, and Farraday finds himself wanted by cops, crooks and killers alike.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisParadise Highway (2022)
A truck driver has been forced to smuggle illicit cargo to save her brother from a deadly prison gang. With FBI operatives hot on her trail, Sally's conscience is challenged when the final package turns out to be a teenage girl.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisFor Your Eyes Only (1981)
A British spy ship has sunk and on board was a hi-tech encryption device. James Bond is sent to find the device that holds British launching instructions before the enemy Soviets get to it first.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe MacKintosh Man (1973)
A member of British Intelligence assumes a fictitious criminal identity and allows himself to be caught, imprisoned, and freed in order to infiltrate a spy organization and expose a traitor; only, someone finds him out and exposes him to the gang...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSilk Road (2021)
Philosophical twenty-something Ross Ulbricht creates Silk Road, a dark net website that sells drugs, while DEA agent Rick Bowden goes undercover to bring him down.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Substitute (1996)
When an inner-city Miami schoolteacher gets her knee broken after standing up to the school's gang leader, her mercenary combat specialist boyfriend goes undercover as a substitute teacher to take down the punk. Soon he discovers a conspiracy of criminals at work, and must reassemble his team from his last jungle raid to stop them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisProtector (2026)
Nikki's life is shattered when her daughter is kidnapped. Thrust into the criminal underworld while hunted by cops and military, she must fight to rescue her child.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisWeekend in Taipei (2024)
A former DEA agent and a former undercover operative revisit their romance during a fateful weekend in Taipei, unaware of the dangerous consequences of their past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAbsolution (2024)
An aging ex-boxer gangster working as muscle for a Boston crime boss receives an upsetting diagnosis. Despite a faltering memory, he attempts to rectify the sins of his past and reconnect with his estranged children. He is determined to leave a positive legacy for his grandson, but the criminal underworld isn’t done with him and won’t loosen their grip willingly.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Organization (1971)
After a group of young revolutionaries break into a company's corporate headquarters and steal $5,000,000 worth of heroin to keep it off the street, they call on San Francisco Police Lieutenant Virgil Tibbs for assistance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRoad of No Return (2009)
Road of no Return follows the final nine days in the lives of four atypical hit men who are secretly brought together in a covert operation to fight the drug trafficking epidemic in the country.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisWardriver (2026)
He’s a Wardriver: a hacker who steals from banks, not people—until he’s noticed. Now the money turns violent, and the woman caught in it could save him or kill them both.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHunting Season (2025)
When a reclusive survivalist and his daughter rescue a mysterious, wounded woman from a river, they become entangled in a deadly web of violence and revenge, forcing them to confront a brutal criminal to survive.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Corrupted (2019)
Set ahead of the 2012 London Olympics, the film follows Liam, an ex-con trying to win back the love and trust of his family. He has lost everything at the hands of a local crime syndicate run by Clifford Cullen, who has high-level connections in politics, finance and the police force. Liam's drive for redemption sees him caught up in a web of conspiracy, crime, and corruption.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChief of Station (2024)
After learning that the death of his wife was not an accident, a former CIA Station Chief is forced back into the espionage underworld, teaming up with an adversary to unravel a conspiracy that challenges everything he thought he knew.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisYear of the Dragon (1985)
In New York, racist Capt. Stanley White becomes obsessed with destroying a Chinese-American drug ring run by Joey Tai, an up-and-coming young gangster as ambitious as he is ruthless. While pursuing an unauthorized investigation, White grows increasingly willing to violate police protocol, resorting to progressively violent measures -- even as his concerned wife, Connie, and his superiors beg him to consider the consequences of his actions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Calling (2014)
Detective Hazel Micallef hasn't had much to worry about in the sleepy town of Port Dundas until a string of gruesome murders in the surrounding countryside brings her face to face with a serial killer driven by a higher calling.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisArt of Eight Limbs (2024)
Four canisters of deadly VX nerve gas have fallen into the hands of an international arms dealer in Myanmar. A CIA recruit delivers a high-tech detection device to an agent already on the ground.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTrouble Man (1972)
It seems that masked men are knocking over the floating crap games of Chalky and Pete. Chalky and Pete hire the cool, loose, elegant Mr. T to fix things. Then, the masked manipulators set up the death of a collector for a rival gang lord. It looks like it's up to T to hold a gang war from breaking out, keep the police off his back, and earn his fee from Chalky and Pete.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTraffic (2000)
An exploration of the United States of America's war on drugs from multiple perspectives. For the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the war becomes personal when he discovers his well-educated daughter is abusing cocaine within their comfortable suburban home. In Mexico, a flawed, but noble policeman agrees to testify against a powerful general in league with a cartel, and in San Diego, a drug kingpin's sheltered trophy wife must learn her husband's ruthless business after he is arrested, endangering her luxurious lifestyle.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTouch and Die (1991)
An American newsman in Rome begins to investigate the appearance of several corpses found throughout Europe with their hands cut off. He soon uncovers not only plots of plutonium theft, but also of nuclear arms deals and dark political schemes.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Raw Deal (1986)
Mark Kaminsky is kicked out of the FBI for his rough treatment of a suspect. He winds up as the sheriff of a small town in North Carolina. FBI Chief Harry Shannon, whose son has been killed by a mobster named Patrovina, enlists Kaminsky in a personal vendetta with a promise of reinstatement into the FBI if Patrovina is taken down. To accomplish this, he must go undercover and join Patrovina's gang.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisTortured (2008)
A mobster orders an undercover FBI agent to torture an accountant.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like this10th & Wolf (2006)
A former street thug returns to his Philadelphia home after a stint in the military. Back on his home turf, he once again finds himself tangling with the mob boss who was instrumental in his going off to be a soldier.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisCon Air (1997)
Newly-paroled former US Army ranger Cameron Poe is headed back to his wife, but must fly home aboard a prison transport flight dubbed "Jailbird" taking the “worst of the worst” prisoners, a group described as “pure predators”, to a new super-prison. Poe faces impossible odds when the transport plane is skyjacked mid-flight by the most vicious criminals in the country led by the mastermind — genius serial killer Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom, and backed by black militant Diamond Dog and psychopath Billy Bedlam.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Business (2005)
During the '80s, a young man named Frankie dreams of escaping London's South East region, and his mother's thug of a boyfriend gives him just the opportunity. After beating up the abusive beau, Frankie runs off to Spain, where he lands a job delivering a package to the dapper Playboy Charlie, a gangster who takes him under his wing. Working as Charlie's driver, Frankie is immersed in a world of fast cars and pretty women -- but all the excess could be his undoing.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDeviant Obsession (2002)
Joan Alton is a lawyer who goes undercover at a strip club to gather clues that might exonerate her lover who has been accused of murder. While the defendant's secrets unveil, she will stop at nothing to catch the real killer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Fire Down Below (1997)
When an EPA representative is murdered in a small Appalachian community, EPA undercover agent Jack Taggart is sent in—posing as a handyman working with a Christian relief agency—to determine what happened.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Baker (2007)
Milo is a professional hit man living on the edge. When failing to fulfill a contract for the first time, he escapes the city to avoid the wrath of his employers. Hiding out in a remote rural village, the locals mistake him for the new baker.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like River Patrol?
The closest matches to River Patrol are All Souls (2023), Contraband (2012) and Paradise Highway (2022). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after River Patrol?
Start with All Souls (2023), the closest match to River Patrol.
What is the highest-rated movie like River Patrol?
Protector (2026), rated 8.4/10 by 648 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like River Patrol?
Wardriver (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like River Patrol?
Yes: All Souls (2023), Contraband (2012) and Paradise Highway (2022).
How are movies similar to River Patrol chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside River Patrol, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.