Movies like The Specialist (1994)
The best movies like The Specialist (1994) are Hard Target (1993), The Replacement Killers (1998) and Double Impact (1991). If The Specialist hooked you with its action and thriller, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedDie Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)7.3/10 from 6,951 votes
- NewestAgent Zero (2025)Released 2025
Hard Target (1993)
When a woman's father goes missing, she enlists a local to aid in her search. The pair soon discover that her father has died at the hands of a wealthy sportsman who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Replacement Killers (1998)
Hired assassin John Lee is asked by Chinatown crime boss Terence Wei to murder the young son of policeman Stan Zedkov. Lee has the boy in his sights, but his conscience gets the better of him, and he spares the child's life. Afraid that Wei will take revenge on his family in China, Lee seeks out expert forger Meg Coburn to obtain the passport he needs to get out of the country, but a band of replacement killers is soon on his trail.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDouble Impact (1991)
Jean Claude Van Damme plays a dual role as Alex and Chad, twins separated at the death of their parents. Chad is raised by a family retainer in Paris, Alex becomes a petty crook in Hong Kong. Seeing a picture of Alex, Chad rejoins him and convinces him that his rival in Hong Kong is also the man who killed their parents. Alex is suspicious of Chad, especially when it comes to his girlfriend.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & action
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Hitman (1991)
After surviving an attempt on his life by his former partner, officer Cliff Garrett (Norris) exacts revenge on those who wronged him by going undercover as a hit man. He works to gain the reputation and trust needed in order to be accepted by the burgeoning Seattle-area criminal underworld, but it is all done in order to take it down from within.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisHard to Kill (1990)
Mason Storm, a 'go it alone' cop, is gunned down at home. The intruders kill his wife, and think they've killed both Mason and his son too. Mason is secretly taken to a hospital where he spends several years in a coma. His son meanwhile is growing up thinking his father is dead. When Mason wakes up, everyone is in danger - himself, his son, his best friend, his nurse - but most of all those who arranged for his death
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDie Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
New York detective John McClane is back and kicking bad-guy butt in the third installment of this action-packed series, which finds him teaming with civilian Zeus Carver to prevent the loss of innocent lives. McClane thought he'd seen it all, until a genius named Simon engages McClane, his new "partner" -- and his beloved city -- in a deadly game that demands their concentration.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
Samantha Caine is a small-town schoolteacher and mom with no memory of her life before washing up on a beach eight years ago. After a car accident and a violent home invasion trigger flashes of her past, she discovers she used to be a deadly CIA assassin. Teaming up with a wisecracking private investigator, Samantha must return to her old ways to take down the people who tried to erase her.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDouble Team (1997)
A CIA agent is interned for failing to kill an international terrorist. Escaping from his island exile, he teams up with a flamboyant arms dealer and sets out to find the terrorist and rescue the agent's family. Together they're a two-man arsenal... with enough voltage to rock the free world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action
SnoozefestMovies like thisAction Jackson (1988)
Vengeance drives a tough Detroit cop to stay on the trail of a power hungry auto magnate who's systematically eliminating his competition.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action
SnoozefestMovies like thisKate (2021)
A ruthless criminal operative has less than 24 hours to exact revenge on her enemies and in the process forms an unexpected bond with the daughter of one of her past victims.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRaw 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: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisAgent Zero (2025)
When police officer Ilias is shot and left in a coma, Alma must reconnect with her former identity as Badh, a ruthless intelligence operative and skilled assassin. She brutally eliminates members of the Khoury family one by one, unleashing the fury of their leader Mansour, only to discover that Mansour is working with Joana her former secret service unit officer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisOut for Justice (1991)
Gino Felino is an NYPD detective from Brooklyn who knows everyone and everything in his neighborhood. Killing his partner was someone's big mistake... because he's now out for justice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisUnder Siege (1992)
A disgruntled ex-CIA operative, his assistant and their assembled group of terrorists seize a battleship with nuclear blackmail in mind. They've planned for every contingency but ignore the ship's cook, former Navy SEAL Casey Ryback—an error that could be fatal.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLionheart (1990)
Lyon Gaultier is a deserter in the Foreign Legion arriving in the USA entirely hard up. He finds his brother between life and death and his sister-in-law without the money needed to heal her husband and to maintain her child. To earn the money needed, Gaultier decides to take part in some very dangerous clandestine fights.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJoshua Tree (1993)
A Los Angeles police detective tracks a fugitive who heads for the desert with a deputy sheriff as hostage.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEraser (1996)
Eraser, an elite federal marshal who "erases" the pasts of jeopardized informers and relocates them into safe anonymity, must protect a moving target who stands to uncover a conspiracy that could shift the balance of power in the world forever.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBroken Arrow (1996)
When rogue stealth-fighter pilot Vic Deakins deliberately drops off the radar while on maneuvers, the Air Force ends up with two stolen nuclear warheads -- and Deakins's co-pilot, Riley Hale, is the military's only hope for getting them back. Traversing the deserted canyons of Utah, Hale teams with park ranger Terry Carmichael to put Deakins back in his box.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPoint of No Return (1993)
Hardened criminal Maggie Hayward's consistent violence, even in police custody, ends in the execution chamber. However, top-secret US government agent 'Bob' arranges a staged death, so Maggie can be elaborately trained as a phantom killer and subdued into obedience.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisUnder Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)
A passenger train has been hijacked by an electronics expert and turned into an untraceable command center for a weapons satellite. He has planned to blow up Washington DC and only one man can stop him, former Navy SEAL Casey Ryback.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisBlack Rain (1989)
Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPayback (1999)
With friends like these, who needs enemies? That's the question bad guy Porter is left asking after his wife and partner steal his heist money and leave him for dead -- or so they think. Five months and an endless reservoir of bitterness later, Porter's partners and the crooked cops on his tail learn how bad payback can be.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKickboxer 4: The Aggressor (1994)
David Sloan must travel to Mexico to save his wife from a savage international terrorist.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisTrue Lies (1994)
A fearless, globe-trotting, terrorist-battling secret agent has his life turned upside down when he discovers his wife might be having an affair with a used car salesman while terrorists smuggle nuclear war heads into the United States.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUnstoppable (2004)
The deranged military and former CIA agent Dean Cage is in a rehab program, trying to forget the traumatic loss of his best friend Scott in Bosnia. When he dates with his girl-friend and Scott's sister, Detective Amy Knight, in a dinning restaurant, he is mistakenly taken as being the CIA agent that is investigating the robbery of the military experiment EX by a man called Sullivan. He is injected with the drug and abducted by the thieves. Amy has six hours to find the also stolen antidote and save Dean's life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisBlown Away (1994)
Blown Away tells the story of Jimmy Dove, who works for the Boston bomb squad. Shortly after Dove leaves the force, his partner is killed by a bomb that Dove thinks might have been made by someone he knows.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Boy Scout (1991)
Somewhere in Los Angeles, the city of broken dreams, a stripper is murdered. Now, the private detective she had hired and her ex-footballer boyfriend are going to find her murderer... if they don't kill each other first. But the more they dig, the deeper they become enmeshed in a web of extortion, blackmail and corrupt politics hidden beneath the surface of professional football.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMan on Fire (1987)
Creasy, a traumatized ex-CIA agent, gets a job as a bodyguard for Samantha, the twelve-year-old daughter of a wealthy Italian family living in a swanky villa on the shores of Lake Como.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Saint (1997)
Simon Templar (The Saint), is a thief for hire, whose latest job to steal the secret process for cold fusion puts him at odds with a traitor bent on toppling the Russian government, as well as the woman who holds its secret.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & action
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisF/X2 (1991)
F/X man Rollie Tyler is now a toymaker. Mike, the ex-husband of his girlfriend Kim, is a cop. He asks Rollie to help catch a killer. The operation goes well until some unknown man kills both the killer and Mike. Mike's boss, Silak says it was the killer who killed Mike but Rollie knows it wasn't. Obviously, Silak is involved with Mike's death, so he calls on Leo McCarthy, the cop from the last movie, who is now a P.I., for help and they discover it's not just Silak they have to worry about.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Specialist?
The closest matches to The Specialist are Hard Target (1993), The Replacement Killers (1998) and Double Impact (1991). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Specialist?
People who watched The Specialist most often go on to Hard Target (1993), The Replacement Killers (1998) and Double Impact (1991).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Specialist?
Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), rated 7.3/10 by 6,951 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Specialist?
Agent Zero (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Specialist?
Yes: Hard Target (1993), The Replacement Killers (1998) and Double Impact (1991).
How are movies similar to The Specialist chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Specialist, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.