Best movies like Beasts Clawing at Straws

Steve Ford is a private detective in Venice Beach, Calif., who's good with the ladies, bad with the punches and wild about his dog Buddy. When local thugs steal Buddy, Ford turns to Spyder, their devious leader, and forges an unlikely alliance. With help from his best friend, Steve pulls out the big guns to retrieve Spyder's stolen cash and cocaine and save Buddy.

When a promised job for Texan Michael fails to materialize in Wyoming, Mike is mistaken by Wayne to be the hitman he hired to kill his unfaithful wife, Suzanne. Mike takes full advantage of the situation, collects the money, and runs. During his getaway, things go wrong, and soon get worse when he runs into the real hitman, Lyle.

After Faye and her psychotic boyfriend, Vince, successfully rob a mob courier, Faye decides to abscond with the loot. She heads to Reno, where she hires feckless private investigator Jack Andrews to help fake her death. He pulls the scheme off and sets up Faye with a new identity, only to have her skip out on him without paying. Jack follows her to Vegas and learns he's not the only one after her. Vince has discovered that she's still alive.

A cop who moonlights as a hit man agrees to kill the hated mother of a desperate drug dealer in exchange for a tumble with the young man's virginal sister.

Four sons of well-known New York mobsters must retrieve a bag of cash from a small Montana town ruled by a corrupt sheriff.

Kidnappers force a young mother to recover money stolen by her shady husband.

A stroke of good luck turns lethal for Sam Phelan and his wife Leslie when they are faced with a life-changing decision that brings strange and sinister Pyke Kubic to their doorstep. As Pyke leads Sam and Leslie on a tumultuous adventure through the streets of Chicago, each are pulled deeper and deeper into a desperate spiral of deception and violence – all in the name of money.

Discovering your wife is sleeping with your boss can make a man do strange things. For a Samba-obsessed London clerk, robbing a bank and boarding the first flight to Rio are just the beginning.

Two worlds collide when a wealthy hedge fund trader returns home to find squatters have occupied his country house.

Two brothers barely scrape by as their father continues to gamble and drink away the money they do bring home. They hatch a plan for a robbery but at what price?

Banks is a hit man, the best, usually working for Latin American drug cartels. He picks up solitary women, uses them briefly for a job, then kills them. He's in the Southwest, headed toward Mexico, when he picks up Bennie, a woman leaving an abusive marriage, going to Paradise, Arizona. The film follows three tracks: Banks's slow recruitment of Bennie, the set-up for the hit at a swank resort in Mexico, and the FBI's close pursuit of Banks, whom they want alive in hopes he'll rat out his bosses. Bennie may not be who she seems, and there may be a chink in Banks's tough-guy armor. Guns, money, and a chance at Paradise.

While transporting a dying man to the hospital, two paramedics find a million dollars in cash sewn into his clothing. When the man dies, they decide to keep it, setting them on a path for a hellish night of violence and mayhem.

Captivated by the lure of sudden wealth, the quiet rural lives of two brothers erupt into conflicts of greed, paranoia and distrust when over $4 million in cash is discovered at the remote site of a downed small airplane. Their simple plan to retain the money while avoiding detection opens a Pandora's box when the fear of getting caught triggers panicked behavior and leads to virulent consequences.

A former child art prodigy and second generation petty thief arranges to buy his way out of prison to spend time with his ailing son, only to be forced to alter his plans and commit one more job for the man who financed his release.

Literature professor Jim Bennett leads a secret life as a high-stakes gambler. Always a risk-taker, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster and offers his own life as collateral. Staying one step ahead, he pits his creditor against the operator of an illicit gambling ring while garnering the attention of Frank, a paternalistic loan shark. As his relationship with a student deepens, Bennett must risk everything for a second chance.

Tom and Anna Wright, a young American couple, fall into severe debt while renovating Anna's family home in London. As the couple faces the loss of their dream to have a house and start a family, they discover that the tenant in the apartment below them is dead, and he's left behind a stash of cash—$400,000 worth. Though initially hesitant, Tom and Anna decide that the plan is simple: all they have to do is quietly take the money and use only what's necessary to get them out of debt. But when they start spending the money and can't seem to stop, they find themselves the target of a deadly adversary—the thief who stole it—and that's when very bad things start happening to good people.

Raven (Darlena Tejeiro) and Ashley (Andrea Bogart), two young women returning from a rock-climbing expedition, find themselves harassed by a group of bikers at a dusty bar in the desert. With surprise and guile on their side, the girls escape by stealing the leader's bike. Within minutes the furious biker gang is in hot pursuit through the hazardous terrain. Believing they have evaded the bikers, the girls discover a satchel of cash on their damaged bike and stumble across the desert to a small motel. The owner, Ned (Joe Goodrich), has agreed to drive them into town when suddenly the bikers appear, and they're looking for payback and the money.

A cop goes undercover in a South Carolina high school. With the help of a local narcotics officer, he investigates the drug ring responsible for another cop's death.

A gangster named Perrier looks to exact his revenge on a trio of fugitives responsible for the accidental death of one of his cronies.

Two Texas border guards find a jeep buried in the desert, with a skeleton, a scoped rifle, and a box with $800,000 in cash. Before they decide whether to keep the money or report it, they privately investigate the clues and unravel a decades old mystery.

When unemployed dockworker Joey Coyle finds $1.2 million that fell off of an armored car, he decides to do the logical thing: take the money and run. After all, he says, finders keepers. He turns to his ex-girlfriend Monica, who works in an investment firm, for advice, before turning to the mob for help laundering the money. While Joey makes plans to leave the country, however, a detective is following his ever-warmer trail in order to recover the cash.

Gambling fever -- along with a brutal bookie -- leads three crooked cops into a double-dealing scheme that lands them in hot water way over their heads.

A suspended cop and his girlfriend blackmail an electronics expert into helping them break into the safe of the girlfriend's boss, a corrupt city councilman who's on the local mob's payroll.

A fabled painting from royal palace was discovered after 400 years. Once properly restored, it could fetch at least $40 million in the international auction market. Bae is the owner of the gallery which possesses the painting. She scouts top-tier restoration artist Lee to work on the painting. With Lee's expert stroke, the controversy surrounding the painting is slowly unveiled. As the painting's true form is restored, art experts in Korea hold a collective breath. Little do they know that they're only a part of a bigger scheme.

Exhibit A tells the timely story of a normal family disintegrating under financial pressure. All is not as it seems as the King family go about their day-to-day lives oblivious of the horror to come. Dad Andy (Bradley Cole) is nursing a secret that ultimately leads to terrible consequences for them all. We witness these chilling events unfold through daughter Judith's video camera, which subsequently becomes Exhibit A.

Jo Pil-seong, a rural detective with a gambling addiction, is on the brink of losing his job when he has his gambling winnings stolen by an escapee convict. Jo Pil-seong sets out to catch the fugitive and retain his money and dignity.

A struggling motel owner and her daughter are taken hostage by a nearly blind career criminal to be his eyes as he attempts to retrieve his cash package from a crooked cop.

Madsen plays an assassin who's hired to kill the woman he loves.

Two thieving teenage brothers, stealing money to help their sick mom, match wits with a troubled security guard stuck at the bottom of a forgotten well.

While on a road trip, a man and his sister pick up two hitchhikers (Brad Renfro, Vinnie Jones) on the run for murder and armed robbery.

Brian Barnes (Johnny Messner) wakes up in the desert wounded and with no memory and no idea why he's surrounded by eight bodies, a van with four million in cash and a van full of cocaine. Brian is pursued by not only notorious drug lord Danny Perez (Danny Trejo) who desperately want his money back, and DEA Agent Rooker (Dolph Lundgren), but also a by the corrupt Sheriff Olson (Michael Pare) who will stop at nothing to get his hand on the new found fortune. On the run, Brian discovers the more he remembers the less he wants to know about who he really is.

Three down-on-their-luck, twenty-something female roommates are living paycheck to paycheck in a rundown apartment, when one night they stumble across $3 million dollars in a suitcase amidst the bloody aftermath of a drug shootout. Despite wanting to keep the money and smuggle it out of the country, the girls are forced into a final showdown and must face off against seasoned criminals who want the cash for themselves.

Since she was young, Soo-Nam has been able to do anything well with her hands. She holds 14 different certificates for typing excellence, but a computer takes over her job. Luckily, she finds a new job and marries. Soo-Nam and her husband decide to buy a house. They take out a loan to pay for their home. Soo-Nam works hard to pay off the loan, but she falls into more debt. Then an opportunity arises to pay off all her debts at once.

Brilliant math teacher formulates the perfect cover-up, after his neighbor murders her abusive ex-husband.

A couple goes to dangerous lengths to find a lung donor for their daughter.