Best movies like Angels with Dirty Faces
The saga of America’s dirty faced kids... and the breaks that life won’t give them!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Angels with Dirty Faces Starring James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, and more. If you liked Angels with Dirty Faces then you may also like: Nasty Habits, The Runner Stumbles, Angels Wash Their Faces, Ash Wednesday, The Bells of St. Mary's and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood.
You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.
Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list
The Runner Stumbles
Dick Van Dyke stars as a priest accused of murdering a nun. Directed by Stanley Kramer, this 1979 drama also features Kathleen Quinlan, Maureen Stapleton, Ray Bolger, Beau Bridges and Tammy Grimes.
Angels Wash Their Faces
A young man just released from a reformatory moves to a new neighborhood with his sister, intending to start a new life. However, he gets mixed up with the local mob boss and corrupt politicians and soon finds himself being framed for an arson and murder he didn't commit.
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is set in the Manhattan of the early 1980's and is about a pair of Irish-American brothers who become embroiled in a conflict with the Irish Mob.
The Bells of St. Mary's
Father O'Malley is sent to St. Mary's, a run-down parochial school on the verge of condemnation. He and Sister Benedict work together in an attempt to save the school, though their differing methods often lead to good-natured disagreements.
Blast of Silence
A hired killer from Cleveland has a job to do on a second-string mob boss in New York. But a special girl from his past, and a fat gun dealer with pet rats, each gets in his way.
Bowery Blitzkrieg
The East Side Kids discover that one of their own, Danny, is torn between staying and school and becoming a boxer, and is getting mixed up with gangsters.
Fatso
Dominick has always been a big kid who loved eating. It was his favourite thing. Then his cousin dies from health complications due to an improper diet and his sister makes him promise to lose some weight. This is very hard for him, but he finds motivation when he falls in love with Lydia. He spends so much time kissing and walking around with her that he no longer eats as many unhealthy things, and he loses weight without even trying.
Escape from New York
In the future, crime is out of control and New York City's Manhattan is a maximum security prison. Grabbing a bargaining chip right out of the air, convicts bring down the President's plane in bad old Gotham. Gruff Snake Plissken, a one-eyed lone warrior new to prison life, is coerced into bringing the President, and his cargo, out of this land of undesirables.
Last Man Standing
John Smith is a mysterious stranger who is drawn into a vicious war between two Prohibition-era gangs. In a dangerous game, he switches allegiances from one to another, offering his services to the highest bidder. As the death toll mounts, Smith takes the law into his own hands in a deadly race to stay alive.
State of Grace
Hell's Kitchen, New York. Terry Noonan returns home after a ten-year absence. He soon reconnects with Jackie, a childhood friend and member of the Irish mob, and rekindles his love affair with Jackie's sister Kathleen.
Death Wish II
Paul Kersey is again a vigilante trying to find five punks who murdered his housekeeper and daughter in Los Angeles.
The Public Enemy
Two young Chicago hoodlums, Tom Powers and Matt Doyle, rise up from their poverty-stricken slum life to become petty thieves, bootleggers and cold-blooded killers. But with street notoriety and newfound wealth, the duo feels the heat from the cops and rival gangsters both. Despite his ruthless criminal reputation, Tom tries to remain connected to his family, however, gang warfare and the need for revenge eventually pull him away.
A Prayer for the Dying
Jack Higgins' straightforward thriller about a guilt-ridden IRA bomber forced into "one last job"
Dead End
Mobster "Baby Face" Martin returns home to visit the New York neighborhood where he grew up, dropping in on his mother, who rejects him because of his gangster lifestyle, and his old girlfriend, Francey, now a syphilitic prostitute. Martin also crosses paths with Dave, a childhood friend struggling to make it as an architect, and the Dead End Kids, a gang of young boys roaming the streets of the city's East Side slums.
Paid in Full
Ace is an impressionable young man working for a dry cleaning business. His friend, drug dealer Mitch goes to prison. In an unrelated incident, he finds some cocaine in a pants pocket. Soon, Ace finds himself dealing cocaine for Lulu. Via lucky breaks and solid interpersonal skills, Ace moves to the top of the Harlem drug world. Of course, unfaithful employees and/or rivals conspire to bring about Ace's fall.
Desecration
Sixteen year-old Bobby is emotionally damaged by his mother's early death. He accidentally causes a nun's death, unleashing a chain of supernatural events that lead him into the pits of Hell.
Get Rich or Die Tryin'
A tale of an inner city drug dealer who turns away from crime to pursue his passion, rap music.
Going My Way
Youthful Father Chuck O'Malley led a colorful life of sports, song, and romance before joining the Roman Catholic clergy. After being appointed to a run-down New York parish, O'Malley's worldly knowledge helps him connect with a gang of boys looking for direction, eventually winning over the aging, conventional Parish priest.
Mean Streets
A small-time hood must choose from among love, friendship and the chance to rise within the mob.
The Musketeers of Pig Alley
A man recognizes the thief who had previously robbed him as one of the men involved in an unrelated mob shootout.
Prey
An examination of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, the film centres on Rod McLeod, a man who is suing the church for restitution after having been abused in childhood by priest William Hodgson “Hod” Marshall, and includes testimonial interviews from some of Marshall's other victims.
Satan Never Sleeps
A priest arrives at a mission-post in China accompanied by a young native girl who has joined him along the way. His job is to relieve the existing priest, who is now too old and weak to continue with the upkeep of the church. However, Communist soldiers arrive at the mission and seize it as a command post. Their leader rapes the native girl and impregnates her, only later to realize that Communism is no good for him. In the end, the foursome flee to the border, but are pursued by Communist forces along the way.
Stolen Summer
Pete, an eight-year-old Catholic boy growing up in the suburbs of Chicago in the mid-1970s, attends Catholic school, where as classes let out for the summer, he's admonished by a nun to follow the path of the Lord, and not that of the Devil. Perhaps taking this message a bit too seriously, Pete decides it's his goal for the summer to help someone get into heaven - by trying to convert a Jew to Catholicism.
Big Town Scandal
A crusading editor and his star reporter aid underprivileged youths and crack down on racketeers out to fix basketball.
Lucky Losers
Slip and Sach's boss, David J. Thurston, has allegedly committed suicide. Slip finds a book of matches with the name of a local nightclub on his boss' desk and finds out from Gabe that a gambling casino is being run out of it. Slip comes to the conclusion that the club had something to do with his boss' death and sets out to find his murderer. The boys get jobs at the club and Louie poses as a rich cattlemen as they gather the information to convict the murderers.
Say One for Me
Father Conroy has a parish which serves the acting and performance community. When one of his parishioners gets too sick to work, his daughter Holly finds a job working for a dance club of questionable character, which is run by Tony Vincent. Vincent never made the big time, and Father Conroy tries to look after Holly.
There's a Girl in My Heart
A Gay-Nineties musical set in NYC's Bowery and East-Side explores the life of its inhabitants---an Irish policeman and his tap-dancing daughter and music-hall wife; a German professor of music and his singing daughter; and an Italian café-owner, a kindly priest, a struggling young doctor and a saloon-keeper. And a political ward-heeler, Terrence Dowd, who has a deceptive and dishonest plan to sell them all out in order to build a fight arena. But he meets his match in property-owner Claire Adamson.
The Last Gangster
A crime boss goes searching for his ex-wife and son after a ten-year prison stint. His old gang has other plans though, and use the child to try and make him disclose the location of the loot he hid before going to the slammer.
Crime in the Streets
A social worker tries to end juvenile crime by getting involved with a street gang.
The Purple Gang
The story of the infamous Purple Gang - a ring of bootleggers, hijackers and killers in 1920's Detroit.
At the Sinatra Club
Brutal and celebrated Mafia gangster John Gotti (Danny Nucci) schemes, shoves and murders his way to the top of that world in this gritty biography told from the perspective of Salvatore Polisi (Jason Gedrick), who owns the Sinatra Club, where Gotti's crew hangs out. Determined to make his name, the young Gotti plans a daring armored-car robbery that he expects to get him noticed by the bosses of each of New York's five major crime families.
Mortal Sins
A thriller directed by Bradford May focusing on a catholic priest dealing with a serial killer's confession and a murder investigation.
Hell's Kitchen
A paroled convict's efforts to improve conditions at a boys' reform school alarm the school's corrupt warden, who has been embezzling funds from the institution. He hatches a plan to derail the reformed convict's efforts and have him sent back to prison, and part of that scheme involves cracking down hard on the reform school's inmates.
Men of Boys Town
Father Flanagan raises funds, helps a disabled boy, and saves an older boy from reform school.
Gambler's Choice
The professional gambler Ross Hadley is the owner of a posh gaming establishment in the heart of New York...
Crashing Las Vegas
An electric shock enables Satch to predict numbers, so the Bowery Boys are off to Las Vegas to win enough money at the roulette wheels to let their landlady buy an apartment building. Witnessing his winning streak, some gangsters decide to move in and find out his "system" for beating the odds.
Sally and Saint Anne
An Irish-American girl asks the saint to guide her family and save them from an alderman.
Lady in the Death House
As a woman walks the "last mile" to her execution she remembers back to the incidents that got her framed for murder.
Celibacy
The argument basically is that in the mix of sex education that now goes on in schools throughout the western world, about how to have safe sex, one crucially important issue has clearly been overlooked, namely what about those people who don't want to engage in sexual relations yet? This programme brings real knowledge and understanding to this hotly debated issue.
The Singer Not the Song
A Roman Catholic priest defies a Mexican bandit whose gang kills villagers in alphabetical order.
The Hoodlum Priest
Venturing into some of the roughest slums of St. Louis, Jesuit priest Rev. Charles Dismas Clark dedicates himself to helping young ex-convicts who are struggling to rejoin a society that fears and rejects them. An especially wrenching case for the Reverend is Billy Lee Jackson, a troubled thief whose personal demons constantly tempt him back to a life of crime — and may ultimately make him pay the highest price for a few desperate decisions.
In This House of Brede
Philippa Talbot is a talented London businesswoman who has decided to give up her position and power to become a nun. The man who loves her is in shock over her departure from his life. When Philippa arrives at Brede, a cloistered Benedictine monastery, the abbess who was responsible for convincing her to enter this vocation suddenly dies. Her successor is Catherine, a sensitive leader who's the first to tell the newcomer to the community that all nuns are to love without a preference for one over another. This becomes very difficult when Joanna, a young nun, singles Sister Philippa out and grows very attached to her.
Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Angels with Dirty Faces Starring James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, and more. If you liked Angels with Dirty Faces then you may also like: Nasty Habits, The Runner Stumbles, Angels Wash Their Faces, Ash Wednesday, The Bells of St. Mary's and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Nasty Habits
In a Philadelphia convent, two nuns battle it out to be elected to the position of head abbess, and neither is about to let anything stand in the way of getting what she wants.