Best movies like Helpless
At dawn, armed with an ardent patience, we'll walk right into the magnificent cities, arthur rimbaud.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Helpless Starring Tadanobu Asano, Ken Mitsuishi, Yoichiro Saito, Kaori Tsuji, and more. If you liked Helpless then you may also like: Yakuza Graveyard, Kaizokuban Bootleg Film, Battles Without Honor and Humanity, Pornostar, Black Angel 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.
Yasuo is a gangster just released from jail. Believing his boss double-crossed him, enraged Yasuo is on his way to find the boss. But before setting out for the dangerous trip, Yasuo asks Kenji to take care of his mentally challenged sister, Yuri, and a mysterious black bag.
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Kaizokuban Bootleg Film
Two best friends—Tatsuo, a retiring Yakuza member, and Kiyoshi, a cop—travel to the funeral of a woman they both loved.
Battles Without Honor and Humanity
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
Pornostar
A young man decides one day to start killing yakuza. After he kills his first two he gets roped into helping a wannabe gangster and his bumbling underlings to perform a hit. While things work out in the beginning, this young psychopath quickly becomes more trouble than the gang expected. Will they be able to rid themselves of him, or will they be his next victims?
Black Angel
Tokyo is a dark technopolis, a city of faceless chrome and cold marble. It is ruled by Nogi, a yakuza boss specializing in drugs and murder. He gained absolute power by executing the former boss and marrying his daughter, Chiaki. Only the mysterious Ikko, Chiaki's half-sister threatens him. Inspired by a legendary hit-woman, Ikko calls herself the Black Angel and plans to wash away her father's murderer with a deluge of blood.
Black Angel 2
Mayo, the Black Angel, is ordered to assassinate a powerful syndicate leader. The hit goes awry, however, as the crime boss' bodyguard steps in the way. It's none other than Yamambe, who once rescued Mayo from a rape and has lived in her heart since then.
A Stranger of Mine
In one long Friday evening, Takeshi Miyata, a straight-arrow businessman, will encounter a number of people (some only fleetingly) who have intertwining fates.
Smashing the 0-Line
Katiri is a reporter so ambitiously amoral that he’ll sell out anyone—including his partner and the drug dealer he’s sleeping with—to get a scoop. But what happens when an even more ruthless female gang boss kidnaps his sister?
Lupin the Third: Goemon's Blood Spray
A yakuza boss hires Goemon Ishikawa, a modern day samurai, to protect him aboard his cruise ship casino. Everything goes sideways when the famous thief, Lupin the Third, tries to rob the vessel. Lupin's being hunted by a powerful and mysterious man: the so called “Ghost of Bermuda.” With Goemon's employer dead in the ensuing chaos, his honor is at stake, and the only way to preserve it is with blood. But this opponent is like no other, and to make things right, Goemon may need to sharpen not only his sword, but himself as well!
New Battles Without Honor and Humanity 1
Bunta Sugawara is Miyoshi, a low-level assassin of the Yamamori gang who is sent to jail after a bungled hit. While in stir, family member Aoki attempts to seize power from the boss, and Miyoshi finds himself stuck between the two factions with no honorable way out.
The Return of Sister Street Fighter
When Koryu's childhood friend Shurei is abducted by gangsters, the desperate young woman recruits a female martial artist and a tough-as-nails stranger to join her for a dangerous rescue mission.
An Ode to Yakuza
Tatematsu Minoru, a yakuza belonging to the Ishikawa group that runs the Shinjuku area, has a beautiful sister named Akane. He dreams of sending her to college and turning her into a perfect young lady. He's extremely fond of Akane. His fondness for her goes beyond how he feels about his mistress, Kanae. And yet, Akane feels alone. Now, a new tutor comes into her life that seems to have taken a liking to her...
Outlaw Killers: Three Mad Dog Brothers
The great Bunta stars as a gangster who is sent to jail for the sake of his gang, but when he’s released he finds everything completely changed and his gang has swept him aside for being too violent. He tries to start a new life with his two ”brothers” but can’t seem to escape old affiliations
Japan's Top Gangster
A boy born in a poor village in Tokushima spends his days idly until a chance meeting sets him on the road to becoming boss of Japan's largest gang.
The Heartbreak Yakuza
A hardened gangster encounters by chance a woman he hasn't seen since childhood. They are both engulfed in the underground world of intergang warfare.
Thugs of Shinjuku
Fresh out of jail, a smart-mouth wise guy Goro takes the name “Big Brother Katsumata.” Not fitting in well with established gangs, he forms a rag-tag gang called “the Shinjuku Brothers.” The members of their gang are thugs who only wish they were traditional yakuza. When they turn up at the funeral for a gangster, they are not welcomed, but a senior boss intervenes to keep things calm. The boss of bosses invites them to join a respected local council of warlords. Katsumata is suspicious of why such powerful men would extend an invitation to lowlife like himself.
Hishakaku and Kiratsune: A Tale of Two Yakuza
With his penultimate film, Uchida revisited one of his popular prewar titles, 1936’s Theatre of Life, an adaptation of Shiro Ozaki’s eponymous novel. Three-time Seijun Suzuki collaborator Goro Tanada wrote a gangsterized adaptation of Ozaki’s story for Uchida at a time when the yakuza had eclipsed the samurai genre as Toei's main cash crop. Protagonist Hishakaku murders a man in a quarrel over a barmaid and goes to jail. In his temporary absence, his girlfriend Otoyo, a former geisha, falls for Hishakaku’s brother, inciting a dangerous love triangle that, in typical yakuza fashion, ends tragically.
Trials of an Okinawa Village
A boss from a trucking company has run-ins with evil yakuza during the American occupation of Okinawa. Her hometown is threatened by usurers, gangsters and indirectly by American GI influences. She must battle a yakuza organization with her employees to help settle things.
The International Gang of Kobe
In 1947, in Kobe, Japan, a local street gang fights for their survival when its turf is overrun by United States occupation forces and international gangs.
Black Panther Bitch M
An assassin trained as a ninja carries the code name M. Hayami is a yakuza boss and a divorced father who is not allowed to come near his and her young daughter Mutsumi from his ex-wife Kazuko. In the big port city of Yokohama, M has to see Hayami, who with his practices has thrown angry blood at the president of the yakuza group.
A Modern Yakuza: The Code of The Lawless
Just released on parole, one young man hurtles towards a face-off with the gangsters controlling Shinjuku and its lucrative prostitutes.
Rogue
Coal miner Isamu Oba is forced to quit his village and leave his mother and siblings behind. Mining buddy Ichiro accompanies him to Tokyo, and the pair enjoy several "fish-out-of-water" sequences before finding employment at a boxing gym with trainer Sawada and his spunky sister Tomoko. The boys also find part time night jobs as roving minstrels in the club district courtesy of benevolent gang boss Asakawa. Of course, they run afoul of boss Karasawa's cruel gang. Karasawa also has it in for Asakawa, and this indirectly throws a spanner into the works as far as Isamu's burgeoning success as a kickboxer. When Asakawa 's HQ is burned to the ground by Karasawa's men, Asakawa tries to kill Karasawa - which, of course, leads to his own gruesome death. Isamu goes on the rampage with his sword, wiping out Karasawa and men.
Nagasaki Butterfly
Oman travel from Shanghai to Japan in search of her mother, only to be betrayed by her companion and sold to a brothel, where she becomes a geisha and gambler.
League of Gangsters
A yakuza man is released from prison after serving a long sentence. He immediately sets about creating a new gang and attempts to pull off a huge ransom score.
New Prison Walls of Abashiri 2
Suehiro Katsuji, a prisoner of Abashiri, is sent to Shikoku to work at a dock where a fierce turf battle takes place between a local gang and the dock operator.
Violent Fraternity
Set in Shibuya in 1949, this is another film based on real life former yakuza boss Noboru Ando's memoirs.
The Rough One
A tale of wannabe yakuza youths. When not cooking up scams with his buddies, Zenkichi develops a crush on Taro's disgusted sister, Miki. But soon the young hoods run afoul of their underworld idols when they rob the wrong gang, led by brutal boss Konno. When Zenkichi's pals start to bite the dust, he hooks up with a more traditional yakuza, Tetsugoro, to retaliate.
Gamblers' Luck
A group of ne'er-do-wells live happily in the slums of what is now Tokyo and have a number of adventures: they get drunk and go whoring, revenge themselves on cruel landlords, animate the corpse of a money-lender in order to frighten people. Then they assist at the marriage of a lovely girl and almost kill themselves gambling to provide her with a dowry.
An Eye for an Eye and a Hole for a Hole
Kenji, the young head of Kato yakuza organisation, just got out of the jail. He comes home and founds out the opposing Sawaki yakuza is invading Kato's territory. Sawaki recruited Ikeyama and asked him to kill Kenji, but Ikeyama was Kenji's lover who exchanged the cup of brothers in a jail.
Wild Life
An ex-boxer working for a game parlor owner gets caught up in a complex blackmail operation he doesn't understand. Before long he's caught between two yakuza bosses and a mysterious thief who motivation is unknown. Add in the boss' daughter who has a crush on him and watch him struggle to make sense of it all and come out alive.
Yakuza Ladies
While her husband is in prison doing time, Tamaki, the wife of a yakuza capo, runs her spouse’s gang with an iron hand. Meanwhile, Makoto, her younger sister, marries a member of a rival band after being raped by him. The two sisters, united by blood ties but married to enemy yakuzas, will ultimately have to decide whose side they’re on.
Secret Summer
Appraiser Rachel (Lindsey Shaw) receives the news that her top-notched client wants to buyout a small town’s beloved library to build a resort and spa on the land. Rachel is completely against the idea of leaving NYC but loses the argument to her boss. So Rachel packs her bags and flies out to California. During her first visit to the library she runs into writer, Jake (Derek Theler), who is researching the tale of Captain Black Bart’s hidden treasures for his next novel. With hopes of saving the library, Mrs. Archer (Rachel Ticotin), the librarian, pushes Jake to show Rachel what the library means to the town. Jake’s already got a lot on his plate with his research and taking care of his niece, Hailey (Chiara Aurelia), and nephew, Noah (Max Page), for the summer but he agrees to help out. As Rachel learns what the library means to the community she must find away to save it before it’s too late.
Bathhouse 911: Jellyfish Bliss
Nikkatsu Roman Porno film about a brothel headhunter named Miura who brings young runaway Choma to a bathhouse/brothel and begins her prostitution career. Miura also falls in love with Choma, which causes problems when she falls for a dangerous yakuza gangster.
Yakuza Graveyard
A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his own syndicate of choice.