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Midnight Express poster

Movies that feel likeMidnight Express (1978)

Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".

If you loved Midnight Express, the closest films we have are A Short Film About Killing (1988), Straight Time (1978) and Papillon (1973). All three share Midnight Express' contemplative and gritty feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Blue Collar (1978).

🍅 90% Rotten Tomatoes★ 7.5 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Alan Parkercontemplativegritty
3 of 12 streaming nowAmazon Prime Video · Criterion Channel · MGM Plus

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If Midnight Express hit the spot, these will too

A Short Film About Killing poster
A Short Film About Killing
1988 · dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski
🍅 91%★ 7.9crime · drama

Common ground in both: prison and court

Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.

Straight Time poster
Straight Time
1978 · dir. Ulu Grosbard
🍅 82%★ 7.4crime · drama

Both are built on the same subject: prison

After being released on parole, a burglar attempts to go straight, get a regular job, and just go by the rules. He soon finds himself back in jail at the hands of a power-hungry parole officer.

Papillon poster
Papillon
1973 · dir. Franklin J. Schaffner
🍅 74%★ 8crime · drama

Common ground: escape

A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

Blue Collar poster
Blue Collar
1978 · dir. Paul Schrader
🍅 96%★ 7.5drama · crime

Contemplative where it counts, gritty underneath

Fed up with mistreatment at the hands of both management and union brass, and coupled with financial hardships on each man's end, three auto assembly line workers hatch a plan to rob a safe at union headquarters.

Pixote poster
Pixote
1980 · dir. Héctor Babenco
🍅 94%★ 7.9crime · drama

Both lean on stillness more than on drama

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

Pickpocket poster
Pickpocket
1959 · dir. Robert Bresson
🍅 93%★ 7.5crime · drama

Crime built on grit, twice over

Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in order to improve his craft. With a police inspector keeping an eye on him, Michel also tries to get a straight job, but the temptation to steal is hard to resist.

Bonnie and Clyde poster
Bonnie and Clyde
1967 · dir. Arthur Penn
🍅 91%★ 7.7crime · drama

Contemplative drama in both cases

In the 1930s, bored waitress Bonnie Parker falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow, and together they start a violent crime spree throughout the country, stealing cars and robbing banks.

Duck, You Sucker poster
Duck, You Sucker
1971 · dir. Sergio Leone
🍅 92%★ 7.5westernPrime Video

Gritty crime, and it commits to that

The difference: Easier on the stillness than Midnight Express

At the beginning of the 1913 Mexican Revolution, greedy bandit Juan Miranda and idealist John H. Mallory, an Irish Republican Army explosives expert on the lam from the British, fall in with a band of revolutionaries plotting to strike a national bank. When it turns out that the government has been using the bank as a hiding place for illegally detained political prisoners -- who are freed by the blast -- Miranda becomes a revolutionary hero against his will.

Close-Up poster
Close-Up
1990 · dir. Abbas Kiarostami
🍅 89%★ 8.2crime · drama

Both working the same drama territory

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.

Blow poster
Blow
2001 · dir. Ted Demme
🍅 56%★ 7.5crime · drama

Both are working the same pair: drug smuggling, a true story

The difference: The scrappier of the two with critics

The story of how George Jung, together with the Medellín Cartel led by Pablo Escobar, established the billion-dollar cocaine empire in the United States in the 1970s.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance poster
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
1962 · dir. John Ford
🍅 95%★ 8.1western

The same preoccupation in both: lawyer

The difference: Sits closer to western than Midnight Express does

Questions arise when Senator Stoddard attends the funeral of a local man named Tom Doniphon in a small Western town. Flashing back, we learn Doniphon saved Stoddard, then a lawyer, when he was roughed up by a crew of outlaws terrorizing the town, led by Liberty Valance. As the territory's safety hung in the balance, Doniphon and Stoddard, two of the only people standing up to him, proved to be very important, but different, foes to Valance.

R poster
R
2010 · dir. Tobias Lindholm
🍅 91%★ 7.1crime · drama

Both are crime through and through

The difference: 32 years apart, and the 2010s show

Imprisoned for violent assault, Rune is placed in the hardcore ward, where his survival depends on quickly learning the prison's parallel world of rules, honor, and obligations.

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The best-reviewed films that share Midnight Express’ defining feeling.