Movies like L.A. Confidential (1997)
The best movies like L.A. Confidential (1997) are Crooked House (2017), The Big Sleep (1946) and A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014). If L.A. Confidential hooked you with its crime and mystery, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Big Sleep (1946)7.6/10 from 1,221 votes
- NewestThe Black Book (2023)Released 2023
Crooked House (2017)
A private investigator helps a former flame solve the murder of her wealthy grandfather, who lived in a sprawling estate surrounded by his idiosyncratic family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Big Sleep (1946)
Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)
Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRighteous Kill (2008)
Two veteran New York City detectives work to identify the possible connection between a recent murder and a case they believe they solved years ago; is there a serial killer on the loose, and did they perhaps put the wrong person behind bars?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisCleaner (2007)
Single father and former cop Tom Cutler has an unusual occupation: he cleans up death scenes. But when he's called in to sterilize a wealthy suburban residence after a brutal shooting, Cutler is shocked to learn he may have unknowingly erased crucial evidence, entangling himself in a dirty criminal cover-up.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Two Jakes (1990)
Real estate developer Jake Berman hires private investigator and war veteran Jake Gittes for some run-of-the-mill matrimonial work. After Berman shoots his wife's lover, who happens to be his business partner, Gittes is drawn into a web of conspiracy and deceit involving the oil reserves beneath Los Angeles. While investigating, Gittes hears a voice from his past that causes him to revisit a traumatic case in Chinatown.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDevil in a Blue Dress (1995)
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.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCop (1988)
An obsessive, insubordinate homicide cop is convinced a serial killer is loose in the Hollywood area and disobeys orders in order to catch him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn the Electric Mist (2009)
Lt. Dave Robicheaux, a detective in New Iberia, Louisiana, is trying to link the murder of a local hooker to New Orleans mobster Julie 'Baby Feet' Balboni, who is co-producer of a Civil War film. When the star of the film, Elrod Sykes, reports finding another corpse in the Atchafalaya Swamp near the movie set, Robicheaux starts another investigation, believing the corpse to be the remains of a black man whose murder he witnessed 35 years earlier.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
A petty thief posing as an actor is brought to Los Angeles for an unlikely audition and finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation along with his high school dream girl and a detective who's been training him for his upcoming role...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDead Man's Folly (1986)
During a murder hunt game at a country house, to which Hercule Poirot is invited as an "expert", a real murder occurs.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisQ & A (1990)
A young district attorney seeking to prove a case against a corrupt police detective encounters a former lover and her new protector, a crime boss who refuses to help him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & crime
SnoozefestMovies like thisGone Baby Gone (2007)
When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons—they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Black Book (2023)
After his son is wrongly accused of kidnapping, a deacon who has just lost his wife takes matters into his own hands and fights a crooked police gang to clear him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMiss Marple: 4.50 from Paddington (1987)
Travelling on the 4.50 from Paddington, Mrs McGillicuddy witnesses a murder on a passing train - but where is the body?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisM (1951)
In the city, someone is murdering children. The police search is so intense, it is disturbing the 'normal' criminals, and the local hoods decide to help find the murderer as quickly as possible.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTed Bundy: American Boogeyman (2021)
Set in a gritty and decadent 1970s America, American Boogeyman follows the elusive and charming killer and the manhunt that brought him to justice involving the detective and the FBI rookie who coined the phrase ‘serial killer’.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn Too Deep (1999)
Drug lord Dwayne Gittens rules Cincinnati with an iron fist. No wonder he's known as "God" on the streets. Determined to break Gittens' stranglehold on the city is undercover cop Jeffrey Cole. But as Cole takes on an assumed identity to penetrate Gittens' criminal empire, he makes a disturbing discovery -- he kind of likes being a gangster.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisExit Wounds (2001)
Maverick cop Orin Boyd always brings down the domestic terrorists he tracks, but he ruffles feathers with his unorthodox techniques -- and soon finds himself reassigned to the toughest district in Detroit. When he discovers a group of detectives secretly operating a drug ring, Boyd joins forces with an unlikely ally -- gangster Latrell Walker -- to bring down the rotten cops.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisInside Man (2023)
Based on true events. A disgraced police detective seeking redemption goes undercover to expose a violent crime syndicate. But as he sinks deeper into the mob, the price for absolution may be higher than he can afford.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHannibal Rising (2007)
The story of the early, murderous roots of the cannibalistic killer, Hannibal Lecter – from his hard-scrabble Lithuanian childhood, where he witnesses the repulsive lengths to which hungry soldiers will go to satiate themselves, through his sojourn in France, where as a medical student he hones his appetite for the kill and learnt sword skills from his Japanese girlfriend, who happened to have similar fate
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHollywoodland (2006)
When Hollywood superstar George Reeves dies in his home, private detective Louis Simo is hired to investigate his death and gets caught in a web of lies involving a big studio executive's wife. Based on a true story.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLonely Hearts (2006)
In the late 1940s, a murderous couple known as the 'The Lonely Hearts Killers' kills close to a dozen people. Two detectives try to nab the duo who find their targets via the personals in the paper.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStreet Kings (2008)
Tom Ludlow is a disillusioned L.A. Police Officer, rarely playing by the rules and haunted by the death of his wife. When evidence implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he is forced to go up against the cop culture he's been a part of his entire career, ultimately leading him to question the loyalties of everyone around him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAmerican Psycho (2000)
A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSecret Window (2004)
Mort Rainey, a writer just emerging from a painful divorce with his ex-wife, is stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger and would-be scribe who claims Rainey swiped his best story idea. But as Rainey endeavors to prove his innocence, he begins to question his own sanity.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both mystery & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMississippi Mermaid (1969)
A tobacco planter on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean becomes engaged through correspondence to a French woman he does not know. The woman that arrives does not look like the picture he received, but he marries her anyway.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like this8 Women (2002)
Eight women gather to celebrate Christmas in a snowbound cottage, only to find the family patriarch dead with a knife in his back. Trapped in the house, every woman becomes a suspect, each having her own motive and secret.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTorrente 2: Mission in Marbella (2001)
For this second film in the cult comedy series Torrente takes our fat police officer from Madrid to Marbella in Spain to investigate a villain’s plot to destroy the city with a missile. This James Bond style slapstick comedy became the most successful box-office film in Spanish film history beating out only the first Torrente film.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTorrente 3: The Protector (2005)
A popular and beautiful politician plans to expose the evil-doings of a multinational corporation. Hoping to silence her, the corporation's top executives decide to hire the most incompetent detective they can find to act as her bodyguard.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like L.A. Confidential?
The closest matches to L.A. Confidential are Crooked House (2017), The Big Sleep (1946) and A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after L.A. Confidential?
Start with Crooked House (2017), the closest match to L.A. Confidential.
What is the highest-rated movie like L.A. Confidential?
The Big Sleep (1946), rated 7.6/10 by 1,221 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like L.A. Confidential?
The Black Book (2023) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like L.A. Confidential?
Yes: Crooked House (2017), The Big Sleep (1946) and A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014).
How are movies similar to L.A. Confidential chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside L.A. Confidential, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.