20 best movies like The China Syndrome (1979)

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

A reporter becomes the target of a vicious smear campaign that drives him to the point of suicide after he exposes the CIA's role in arming Contra rebels in Nicaragua and importing cocaine into California. Based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb.

Megan Carter is a reporter duped into running an untrue story on Michael Gallagher, a suspected racketeer. He has an alibi for the time his crime was allegedly committed—but it involves an innocent party. When he tells Carter the truth and the newspaper runs it, tragedy follows, forcing Carter to face up to the responsibilities of her job when she is confronted by Gallagher.

Porter Wren is a Manhattan tabloid writer with an appetite for scandal. On the beat he sells murder, tragedy, and anything that passes for the truth. At home, he is a dedicated husband and father. But when Caroline, a seductive stranger asks him to dig into the unsolved murder of her filmmaker husband Simon, he is drawn into a very nasty case of sexual obsession and blackmail--one that threatens his job, his marriage, and his life.

Two young officers are marked for death after confiscating a small cache of money and firearms from the members of a notorious cartel during a routine traffic stop.

One memorable night in the life of veteran patrol officer Ray Mandel and his trainee, ambitious rookie cop Nick Holland in the LAPD's Olympic Division. With two cop killers on the loose and hunting for more targets, Mandel and Holland must contend with a city about to boil over, as well as Jack VanZandt, an unhinged rogue cop out for payback running wild in their patrol zone.

A young journalist goes deep undercover within a mountain commune and becomes manipulated by a duplicitous cult leader.

As investigative reporter Ward Jansen and his partner Yardley Acheman chase a sensational, career-making story with the help of Ward's younger brother Jack and sultry death-row groupie Charlotte Bless, the pair tries to prove violent swamp-dweller Hillary Van Wetter was framed for the murder of a corrupt local sheriff.

Two Supreme Court Justices have been assassinated. One lone law student has stumbled upon the truth. An investigative journalist wants her story. Everybody else wants her dead.

Prime leader of a campaign against a big government project is killed in what appears to be a road accident. An IAS officer is ordered to probe the incident and the veils of falsehood begin to drop.

When a mafia accountant is taken hostage on his beat, a police officer – wracked by guilt from a prior stint as a negotiator – must negotiate the standoff, even as his own family is held captive by the mob.

Handsome, unflappable U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins is the future of his political party: an honorable appointee who serves as the chairman of a committee overseeing defense spending. All eyes are upon the rising star to be his party's contender for the upcoming presidential race. Until his research assistant/mistress is brutally murdered and buried secrets come tumbling out.

When a teenage girl says she's the victim of a secret network called The Sisterhood of Night, a quiet suburban town becomes the backdrop for a modern-day Salem witch trial.

A police detective in a South American country is dedicated to hunting down a revolutionary guerilla leader.

Hard-nosed liberal lawyer Roman J. Israel has been fighting the good fight forever while others take the credit. When his partner – the firm’s frontman – has a heart attack, Israel suddenly takes on that role. He soon discovers some unsettling truths about the firm – truths that conflict with his values of helping the poor and dispossessed – and finds himself in an existential crisis that leads to extreme actions.

A secretary is found dead in a White House bathroom during an international crisis, and Detective Harlan Regis is in charge of the investigation. Despite resistance from the Secret Service, Regis partners with agent Nina Chance. As political tensions rise, they learn that the crime could be part of an elaborate cover-up. Framed as traitors, the pair, plus Regis' partner, break into the White House in order to expose the true culprit.

In the former Czechoslovakia, 1950s, police captain Hakl investigates a jewelery robbery. An opened safe deposit leads to a known burglar. What seems an easy case soon starts to tangle. When he is called off the case, he continues on his own. The investigation leads him onto thin ice. Can he beat a stronger enemy and save his family and his own life?

Set in Stalin-era Soviet Union, a disgraced MGB agent is dispatched to investigate a series of child murders -- a case that begins to connect with the very top of party leadership.

Hotshot Washington lawyer, Robert Dean becomes a victim of high-tech identity theft when a hacker slips an incriminating video into his pocket. Soon, a rogue National Security agent sets out to recover the tape – and destroy Dean.

6 strangers are kidnapped and through governmental technology have proof they have all killed before and are told 5 will die this night, one may walk, and the six have 2 hours to decide who gets to live.

Jack Terry is a master sound recordist who works on grade-B horror movies. Late one evening, he is recording sounds for use in his movies when he hears something unexpected through his sound equipment and records it. Curiosity gets the better of him when the media become involved, and he begins to unravel the pieces of a nefarious conspiracy. As he struggles to survive against his shadowy enemies and expose the truth, he does not know whom he can trust.

A pharmaceutical company recruits a well-known scientist to help develop a vaccine against a deadly virus.

A group of journalists covering George Bush's planned invasion of Iraq in 2003 are skeptical of the presidents claim that Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction."

Richard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter.

A troubled hedge fund magnate, desperate to complete the sale of his trading empire, makes an error that forces him to turn to an unlikely person for help.

Shy and reserved, Claire Decker, 30ish, is a part-time investigator for Social Services. Typically, she solves cases where senior citizens have died alone, leaving no indication of who must handle their estate. This time however, Claire is reluctantly drawn into a puzzling murder case. The local police have been unable to solve the horrific crime, or even decipher the victim's true identity. A beautiful and enigmatic young blond, known only as "The White Orchid," has been brutally murdered. As Claire is drawn deeper and more intimately into the dead woman's life, she finds herself taking dangerous chances and pushing personal and professional boundaries. As she gets closer to the truth, Claire must effectively become the charismatic "White Orchid" in order to solve the mysterious crime.

The five days when Copenhagen was held in a panic grip by an intelligent activist and former elite shooter, who takes to arms when a woman journalist writes about the government’s broken promises in an environmental question.

It’s 1994: a 13-year-old boy disappears from his home in San Antonio, Texas. Three and a half years later, he is found alive, thousands of miles away, in Spain. Disoriented and quivering with fear, he divulges his shocking story of kidnap and torture. His family is overjoyed to bring him home. But all is not what it seems. Sure, he has the same tattoos, but he looks decidedly different, and he now speaks with a strange accent. Why doesn't the family seem to notice these glaring inconsistencies? It's only when an investigator starts asking questions that this astounding true story takes an even stranger turn.

Based on the true story of a Russian serial killer who, over many years, claimed victim to over 50 people. His victims were mostly under the age of 17. In what was then a communists state, the police investigations were hampered by bureaucracy, incompetence and those in power. The story is told from the viewpoint of the detective in charge of the case.

A stranger in the increasingly strange city of San Francisco, Japanese crime novelist Aki is unsure of precisely what role she has to play in a real-life murder mystery involving ambiguous MacGuffins and amorphous identities. Unfolding in lonely places such as bookshops and hotel bars, Dave Boyle's moody thriller uncovers exhilarating new takes on genre conventions. Consequently, it's an alluring l'homme fatal who supplies Aki with the breadcrumb trail of clues that entices her into a labyrinthine plot of sinister dealings. In turn, the aging sheriff (veteran character actor Pepe Serna, fantastic in a rare leading role), who should rightfully be riding to her rescue, proves to be equally out of his depth. The game is afoot, the chase is exhilarating and the stakes are perilously high in this inspired neo-noir.

Boozer, skirt chaser, careless father. You could create your own list of reporter Steve Everett's faults but there's no time. A San Quentin Death Row prisoner is slated to die at midnight – a man Everett has suddenly realized is innocent.

Spies, cops and armed children cross paths on a day of danger, mystery and possible transformation. Five unusual characters are unknowingly connected to an extraordinary smuggling operation, as religious conspiracy collides with urban crime.

An unconventional undercover Chicago cop and his partner are recruited to commit the murder of a New Orleans criminal kingpin.

Nick Condon, an American journalist in 1945 Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Japanese provides the action, but this is overshadowed by the propaganda of the time.

David Nau leads a band of modern day pirates who raid yachts and sail boats of people on vacation in the Caribbean. When reporter Blair Maynard and his son arrive to investigate the mystery of the disappearing boats, Nau and his band of raiders decide to induct them into their tribe.

The tale of two brothers with serious financial woes. When a third party proposes they turn to crime, things go bad and the two become enemies.

Uncle John revolves around the struggle to keep a mysterious disappearance unsolved

LEE Kang-hee, an editorialist of the influential conservative newspaper puts a congressman, JANG Pil-woo to the position of a leading candidate for President using the power of the press. Behind this, there was his secret deal with the paper’s biggest sponsor. AHN Sang-goo, a political henchman who supported LEE and JANG gets his hand cut as the price when he gets caught pocketing the record on the sponsor’s slush fund. WOO Jang-hoon, an ambitious prosecutor starts to investigate the relationship with JANG and the sponsor believing it is the only chance he can make it to the top. While getting down to the grass roots on the case, WOO meets AHN who has been deliberately planning his revenge. Now the war among the one blind for power, the one hell bent for vengeance, and the one eager for success starts.

Matt Lee Whitlock, respected chief of police in small Banyan Key, Florida, must solve a vicious double homicide before he himself falls under suspicion. Matt Lee has to stay a few steps ahead of his own police force and everyone he's trusted in order to find out the truth.

An American attorney on business in China, ends up wrongfully on trial for murder and his only key to innocence is a female defense lawyer from the country.

When the son of a successful judge is killed by two police officers and the system sets them free, a hardened veteran detective finds some incriminating files on the officers and the judge teams up with another mourning father to take the law into his own hands.

Bernard Salzmann's thriller Assumed Killer tells the tale of a reporter investigating a serial killer. After she suffers an accident and becomes an amnesiac, she begins to suspect her husband may be the person responsible for the brutal slayings

In this true story, Veronica Guerin is an investigative reporter for an Irish newspaper. As the drug trade begins to bleed into the mainstream, Guerin decides to take on and expose those responsible. Beginning at the bottom with addicts, Guerin then gets in touch with John Traynor, a paranoid informant. Not without some prodding, Traynor leads her to John Gilligan, the ruthless head of the operation, who does not take kindly to Guerin's nosing.

When the body of Army Capt. Elizabeth Campbell is found on a Georgia military base, two investigators, Warrant Officers Paul Brenner and Sara Sunhill, are ordered to solve her murder. What they uncover is anything but clear-cut. Unseemly details emerge about Campbell's life, leading to allegations of a possible military coverup of her death and the involvement of her father, Lt. Gen. Joseph Campbell.

Martial arts expert Matt Hunter was one of the most promising operatives in Army intelligence until his parents were killed by terrorists, and he retired to the family's farm in Louisiana to take care of his 12-year-old sister Sara and their grandfather Jimmy. Larry Richards, a black man running for the Senate, is one of Matt's best friends. Larry has become the target of The Pentangle, a racist organization led by a man named Glastenbury, and Glastenbury doesn't want Larry to be elected. In an attempt on Larry's life during a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, The Pentangle kills one of Larry's sons. Matt lets Larry, his wife Daisy, and his other son move to the remotely located farm so they can hide from Glastenbury and the Pentangle, but the Pentangle strikes again, setting the farmhouse on fire. Matt and Sara escape as the only survivors. Then the Pentangle kidnaps Sara, sending Matt on a mission to rescue Sara from Glastenbury and the Pentangle

A small group of survivors are left behind after millions of people suddenly vanish during the rapture and the world is plunged into chaos and destruction.

Undercover follows Maya, the first black Director Of Public Prosecutions. Just as she is about to take up the post and her life comes under intense public scrutiny, she learns that that her husband Nick has been lying to her for years. Twenty years ago Nick was a fearless and dedicated undercover officer, infiltrating organisations considered a danger to society because of their political beliefs. Nick built himself a fake past and now with his wife unsuspecting and his conscience killing him – his secret identity may compromise the new Director of Public Prosecutions.

Leona Stevenson is confined to bed and uses her telephone to keep in contact with the outside world. One day she overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is desperate to find out who is the intended victim.

This sequel to the classic Chinatown finds private detective Jake Gittes still haunted from the events of the first film. Hired by a man to investigate his wife's infidelities, Jake once again finds himself involved in a complicated plot involving murder, oil, and even some ghosts from his past.

To take down South Boston's Irish Mafia, the police send in one of their own to infiltrate the underworld, not realizing the syndicate has done likewise. While an undercover cop curries favor with the mob kingpin, a career criminal rises through the police ranks. But both sides soon discover there's a mole among them.