Best movies like The Big Boss

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Big Boss Starring Koji Tsuruta, Seizaburō Kawazu, Akira Takarada, Mitsuko Kusabue, and more. If you liked The Big Boss then you may also like: The Yakuza, The Rise of the Krays, Kill the Irishman, The Punisher, Fudoh: The New Generation 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.

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Ryuta and Mineo Komatsu are brothers, both yakuza (gangsters). Mineo, although complicit in crime, even murder, wants out of the gangster life, hoping to become a successful singer instead. Ryuta loves his brother, but Mineo's possible defection presents problems for the gang, and Ryuta realizes he must kill his brother if he wants to survive.

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The Yakuza

Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after several years in order to rescue his friend George's kidnapped daughter - and ends up on the wrong side of the Yakuza, the notorious Japanese mafia.

The Rise of the Krays

Follows the early years of two unknown 18 year old amateur boxers who quickly fought their way to becoming the most feared and respected villains in all of London. Told through the eyes of a close friend that survived them, we see them rise to infamy through drugs, sex and murder.

Kill the Irishman

Over the summer of 1976, thirty-six bombs detonate in the heart of Cleveland while a turf war raged between Irish mobster Danny Greene and the Italian mafia. Based on a true story, Kill the Irishman chronicles Greene's heroic rise from a tough Cleveland neighborhood to become an enforcer in the local mob.

The Punisher

The avenging angel of Marvel Comics fame comes brilliantly to life in this searing action-adventure thriller! Dolph Lundgren stars as Frank Castle, a veteran cop who loses his entire family to a mafia car bomb. His ex-partner believes Castle survived the blast and became the Punisher, living in the sewers and exacting vigilante violence against mob bosses throughout the city. When the populace is caught in the midst of a gang war that he caused, Castle must again emerge from the shadows and save the innocent.

Fudoh: The New Generation

In order to settle a business dispute, a mob leader murders one of his own teenage sons. The surviving son vows to avenge his brother's death, and organizes his own gang of teenage killers to destroy his father's organization.

Japanese Summer: Double Suicide

A sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal young man she meets on the street, a gun-crazy wannabe gangster—these are just three of the irrational, oddball anarchists trapped in an underground hideaway in Oshima’s devilish, absurdist portrait of what he deemed the “death drive” in Japanese youth culture.

Criminal Woman: Killing Melody

Reiko Ike stars as the daughter of a man who has been pushed into drug dealing by the local Yakuza mob. Having outlived his usefulness to the gang he is murdered and Reiko is gang raped, leading her to attempt a knife attack on the Yakuza boss (Ryoji Hayama) at a swank nightclub. Failing to kill him she ends up in prison, where she befriends a crew of other malcontents (including Yumiko Katayama and Chiyoko Kazama) and meets the Yakuza boss's girlfriend (Miki Sugimoto). Upon release Reiko reassembles her mob and launches a Machiavellian scheme to engineer a gang war between Hayama's Oba Industries and the formerly dominant Hamayasu Clan. The rival gangs begin killing each other off and Reiko works her way closer to her ultimate vengeance.

The Machine Girl

The life of a young, Japanese schoolgirl is destroyed when her family is killed by a Ninja-Yakuza family. Her hand cut off, she replaces it with various machines-of-death, and seeks revenge.

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: Graduation

Izumi Hoshi is senior in high school, but she led a small yakuza group in her past. After killing her uncle's murderer with a machine gun, her yakuza group disbanded. Izumi now lives an ordinary life as a high school student and works as a manager at a cafe. A dangerous situation soon awaits for Izumi.

Together Brothers

A group of ghetto kids try to find out who killed a popular police officer.

Tattooed Life

After his own gang sets him up to kill a rival mobster, a hit man is forced to flee with his younger brother.

Gang War

Saxophone player Clyde meets a woman named Flowers, and teaches her to dance. He later discovers that gangster boss "Blackjack" is also in love with her. "Blackjack" is also battling gang boss Mike Luego in a violent turf war.

Dino

A juvenile delinquent on parole receives support from a social worker and a girl from a slum.

Tokyo Tribe

In an alternate Japan, territorial street gangs form opposing factions collectively known as the Tokyo Tribes. The simmering tension between them is about to boil over into all-out war.

Pleasures of the Flesh

A corrupt businessman blackmails the lovelorn reprobate Atsushi into watching over his suitcase full of embezzled cash while he serves a jail sentence. Rather than wait for the man to retrieve his money, however, Atsushi decides to spend it all in one libidinous rush—fully expecting to be tracked down and killed.

Cops vs. Thugs

When a lucrative waterfront development becomes available, the Kawade gang quickly use their political connections to secure the land. However, the acting boss of the Ohara gang also has his eyes on the property and recruits crooked detective Tokumatsu Kuno to help him hijack the deal. With relations between the rival gangs at breaking point, it's not long before all-out war breaks out as the gangsters, police and local politicians battle for control of the city.

Blood Massacre

A gang are on the run after a video store robbery goes wrong and results in a death. One of their party, Rizzo is maybe not as stable as he should be. Hiding out at a family's farm house, events unfold that reveal not everything is as it seems. Who will survive the Blood Massacre?

The Crew

Hoping to raise enough capital to finance a legitimate business and leave behind his life of crime, Liverpool underworld boss Ged Brennan sends his brother Ratter and a crew to pull a daring final heist. But when Ratter kills a drug kingpin during the job, Brennan must turn to rival crook Franner to avert an all-out gangland war.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Former yakuza underling Kazuma Kiryū has recently been released from prison after a lengthy incarceration and is trying to piece his life together and distance himself from his yakuza past. Unfortunately, Kiryū's problems slowly escalate as he is pursued by a former associate, the baseball-bat-wielding psycho Gorō Majima, who has a grudge to settle with Kiryū.

Street Mobster

After serving time, a defiant street thug is incensed to find his town overrun by two yakuza factions. He gathers his crew and takes them on.

Mexican Gangster

Johnny Sun is a Mexican American with a white mother and Mexican dad. He witnesses his parents murder and gets his revenge years later, leading to a hard life as a gangster in drugs and smuggling. He tries to keep his borther from the life and finds himself fending for his own life.

Outlaw: Gangster VIP

Goro had grown up in the yakuza world. As an active member of the Mizuhara family crime syndicate, he expressed his loyalty by always putting himself in the forefront of every battle. Violence never bothered him. However, after being sentenced to three years in prison for stabbing a rival gang’s hit man, he becomes disenchanted with the Yakuza life style. Goro is determined to start anew, but karma catches up. His two closest friends are murdered by his ex-boss. He is left with two options: to kill or be killed.

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

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.

Tokyo Mafia: Yakuza Wars

After being excommunicated from the yakuza, Ginya Yabuki returns from the shadows as leader of his own crime syndicate known as the Tokyo Mafia.

Bad Girl Mako

Patronized by a gang ruling the city, Mako delinquently plays around a night club every night with her bad company. One night, a guy Hideo gets closer to her for one-night stand, and they consequently fall in love. However, Hideo is killed by the gang. Mako swears vengeance on her beloved's murderer.

Tokyo Mafia 2: Wrath of the Yakuza

Yabuki's old friend returns as a deadly enemy. Blood brothers are driven to bitter hatred as betrayal rips mafia loyalties apart! Only the strong will survive the wrath of The Yakuza.

Violent Fraternity

Set in Shibuya in 1949, this is another film based on real life former yakuza boss Noboru Ando's memoirs.

Rise of the Footsoldier: Part II

On the 6th December 1995, three Essex gang members were brutally murdered in cold blood. It’s now early 1997 and whoever killed the three men have yet to be brought to justice. An associate of the men, still mourning the loss of his friends, is convinced that it’s only a matter of time before he’s next. For him, the only way out is to go back in and work his way back up the criminal ladder. The higher he gets, the more violent the jobs become, his quest for power turning into an obsession. With life and family on the line can he hold his nerve together one last time in order to get out alive?

Woman in Witness Protection

Biwako is a vain, middle-aged actress who witnesses a brutal murder. Realizing that the very public life of the woman makes their sole witness vulnerable to the killers, the police assign two officers to safeguard her until the trial. In the interim, the lives of Biwako and everyone around her are changed in unexpected ways.

Two Punks

Centering on a young drifter almost casually drawn into violence--a crime drama about a boy and a man equally ill-equipped for criminal life and straight society. Neither wants to be a Yakuza, but normal life presents problems.

Bonds

Tetsuro Haga is a troubled gangster, living under the assumed identity Ise for ten years, to escape jail for gunning down his cruel adoptive father. His life begins to unravel when a journalist following him takes an interest in the wife of a boyhood chum, and the wife of another close friend takes an interest in Ise. A couple of murders later, Ise/Haga goes on the run and also sets out for revenge.

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