20 best movies like World on a Wire (1973)

In an overpopulated futuristic Earth, a New York police detective finds himself marked for murder by government agents when he gets too close to a bizarre state secret involving the origins of a revolutionary and needed new foodstuff.

The Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Centre (LETAC) has developed SID version 6.7: a Sadistic, Intelligent, and Dangerous virtual reality entity which is synthesized from the personalities of more than 150 serial killers, and only one man can stop him.

Ren Amari is the driven inventor of a revolutionary new drug. OtherLIfe expands the brain's sense of time and creates virtual reality directly in the user's mind. With OtherLife, mere seconds in real life feel like hours or days of exciting adventures. As Ren and her colleagues race around the clock to launch OtherLife, the government muscles in to use the drugs as a radical solution to prison overcrowding. They will create virtual cells where criminals serve long sentences in just minutes of real time. When Ren resists, she finds herself an unwilling guinea pig trapped in a prison cell in her mind. She must escape before she descends into madness, and then regain control of OtherLife before others suffer the same fate.

Mo Ali’s futuristic knife-crime drama brings the dystopian environment of CHILDREN OF MEN and DISTRICT 13 to London’s East 17. SHANK delivers a ruthless vision of forthcoming urban life, where guns have been superseded by knives and are fiercely wielded by aimless youths. Amidst the chaos is the Paper Chazers gang, a rare morally conscious group who trade scavenged food for money. After Chazers gang member, Junior (Kedar Williams-Stirling), witnesses his brother, murder he must decide whether to get revenge of stick to the gangs moral code... In this superbly paced and artistic film, present-day social issues, and murky city streets, provide a perfect canvas for imagination and action.

Anna Macy left Kettering when she was just 14, shortly after her best friend, Gillian Baxter mysteriously disappeared. The two girls had been playing in the forbidden forests outside Kettering when they saw strange lights in the sky. Eight hours later, Anna was found alone, terrified and covered in blood. 15 years on, Anna returns to find the town struggling to survive. The forests have been marked for logging and the community is being torn apart by passionate but violent clashes between environmentalists and the local loggers.

In the near future, a police officer specializes in malfunctioning robots. When a robot turns out to have been programmed to kill, he begins to uncover a homicidal plot to create killer robots... and his son becomes a target.

Bill Pope is a CIA agent on a mission in London tracking down a shadowy hacker nicknamed "The Dutchman." When he gets mysteriously ambushed and killed, an experimental procedure is used to transfer his memories into dangerous ex-convict Jericho Stewart. When he wakes up with the CIA agent's memories, his mission is to find The Dutchman and eliminate him before the hacker launches ICBM's and starts World War III. But complications soon arise and the mission turns personal.

A brutal mugging leaves Grey Trace paralyzed in the hospital and his beloved wife dead. A billionaire inventor soon offers Trace a cure — an artificial intelligence implant called STEM that will enhance his body. Now able to walk, Grey finds that he also has superhuman strength and agility — skills he uses to seek revenge against the thugs who destroyed his life.

A gritty mind-bending thriller about three twenty-somethings who find themselves in an impossible time labyrinth, where each day they awaken to the same terrifying day as the preceding one.

In a world where families are limited to one child due to overpopulation, a set of identical septuplets must avoid being put to a long sleep by the government and dangerous infighting while investigating the disappearance of one of their own.

Approaching collapse, the nation's economy is quickly eroding. As crime and fear take over the countryside, the government continues to exert its brutal force against the nation's most productive who are mysteriously vanishing - leaving behind a wake of despair. One man has the answer. One woman stands in his way. Some will stop at nothing to control him. Others will stop at nothing to save him. He swore by his life. They swore to find him.

A serial killer, who drains his victims for blood is on the loose in London, the Police follow him to a house owned by an eccentric scientist.

Set in the year 1999 during the last days of the old millennium, the movie tells the story of Lenny Nero, an ex-cop who now deals with data-discs containing recorded memories and emotions. One day he receives a disc which contains the memories of a murderer killing a prostitute. Lenny investigates and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of blackmail, murder and rape. Will he survive and solve the case?

Deep within Buenos Aires's labyrinthine subway system, a train mysteriously disappears along with its 30 passengers. The subway officials are greatly troubled and call in topographer Daniel Pratt to help them find it. Unfortunately, the tunnels are so vast and complex, that Pratt needs his mentor Hugo Mistein to help him. Unfortunately, he too has vanished.

Syd March is an employee at a clinic that sells injections of live viruses harvested from sick celebrities to obsessed fans. When he becomes infected with the disease that kills super sensation Hannah Geist, Syd becomes a target for collectors and rabid fans. He must unravel the mystery surrounding her death before he suffers the same fate.

Jarod takes a keen interest in an ancient symbol that may unlock secrets about his family. But Miss Parker is hot on Jarod's trail and about to make discoveries of her own. Their investigation leads to a remote Island off the Scottish coast, where a set of sacred scrolls, vital to the Centre, have been hidden – and protected – for centuries.

Mike Kendall, a disgraced ex-cop, is fighting a losing battle with the bottle. When he finds a woman left for dead at the side of a road, Kendall turns private eye to track down her killers, taking one last shot at redemption.

The world at an end, a dying mother sends her young son on a quest to find the place that grants wishes.

Mark, a man who commits perjury for his company in order to help his mother. However, he meets a mysterious person who threatens him and forces him to rob a bank. After the theft, the mysterious person continues to cause disasters to happen to Mark, which is when Mark vows to break free from this person's control and expose his or her true identity.

Earth has been conquered by robots from another galaxy and the human survivors must stay in their homes, or risk incineration.

Beatrice Prior and Tobias Eaton venture into the world outside of the fence and are taken into protective custody by a mysterious agency known as the Bureau of Genetic Welfare.

Are government surveillance cameras intended to keep us safe actually killing people? Is it a plot by the government to suppress the opposition, or have our terrorist enemies secretly gained control of our security system and are now using it against us? Following another major terrorist attack the US instigates an intense government surveillance program in which every camera in the country is linked into a single, all-seeing network called the ODIN system (for Optical Defense Intelligence Network). The system includes millions of mobile, robotic surveillance cameras known as "Eyeborgs," which watch everyone for suspicious behavior, all in the name of security, law enforcement and keeping America safe. An agent for the Department of Homeland Security grows suspicious of the system after a series of odd murders in which the physical evidence doesn't match up to what the video records show. Now he must work outside the system to find out who is really controlling the Eyeborgs.

Former Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent, one side of his face scarred by acid, goes on a crime spree based on the number '2'. All of his actions are decided by the flip of a defaced, two-headed silver dollar.

As a snow storm closes in, one final plane takes off. The plane reports to the ground that both pilots are dead, while the slowly dwindling number of passengers on the plane wish that they’d never left the ground.

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.

An environmental analyst is asked by the police to determine if two deaths by hydrogen sulfide poisoning are an accident - or a murder. But when he meets a young woman at both sites, a scientific mystery begins.

In the near future, everything has changed. Basic human rights have become the rarest of luxuries. No one knows when this started but everyone knows how. The VXII, the deadliest virus ever created, spread like wildfire and decimated the majority of the world's population. The non-infected survivors now cling to life in four quarantined cities behind a wall. Shawn Kors and his brother, Jude, survived the VXII only to grow up in a squalid internment camp for orphaned children. Under the care of the militia, they were pitted against other children in backwoods death matches. Shawn, Jude, and the few who escaped became notorious for their incredible fighting skills. They have since parted ways. Shawn now makes a comfortable living as a janitor at the local medic station. He spends his days dreaming of curing the VXII. When Shawn discovers the discarded body of a fellow internment camp friend, he is forced out of hiding and pulled into a rabbit hole of conspiracy and violence.


Detectives from the present and a detective from the past communicate via walkie-talkie to solve a long-time unsolved case.

Benjamin, a young German computer whiz, is invited to join a subversive hacker group that wants to be noticed on the world's stage.

A psychic doctor, John Clancy, works with an FBI special agent in search of a serial killer.

In 1988, Philadelphia police officer Thomas "Locke" Lockhart, hungry to become a detective, begins tracking a serial killer whose crimes defy scientific explanation. When the killer mysteriously resurfaces nine years later, Locke's obsession with finding the truth threatens to destroy his career, his family, and possibly his sanity.

An Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv discovers a dark secret about his wife in the aftermath of a suicide bombing.

A ship carrying settlers to a new home on Mars after Earth is rendered uninhabitable is knocked off-course, causing the passengers to consider their place in the universe.

Every child comes into the world full of promise, and none more so than Chappie: he is gifted, special, a prodigy. Like any child, Chappie will come under the influence of his surroundings—some good, some bad—and he will rely on his heart and soul to find his way in the world and become his own man. But there's one thing that makes Chappie different from any one else: he is a robot.

Taurus City, The United States of Europe, 2023. Uly, a disillusioned soldier riddled with amnesia, returns home from a war in the Middle East, knowing only that he must desperately comb the city to find his beloved wife, Penelope. Fate fills this endless night with a series of chance meetings. Whether it be the wealthy Alcyde, the beastly cyclops Popov, Aeo the Gyspy, or Cici the Sorceress, good or evil that they be, each encounter fills in a missing piece of Uly's memory, so that he can finally face his past.

Time-traveling bounty hunters find a doomed race-car driver in the past and bring him to 2009 New York, where his mind will be replaced with that of a terminally ill billionaire.

Set in the year 2017, the Japanese government attempts to secretly control the DNA of its people. Ryuhei Kagura (Kazunari Ninomiya) is a top scientist in the field of DNA analysis. He works at the DNA analysis institution run by the National Police Agency. When the inventor of the DNA analysis system is murdered, Ryuhei Kagura's own DNA is found at the murder scene. Ryuhei Kagura becomes the prime suspect and then he becomes a fugitive. Veteran detective Reiji Asama (Etsushi Toyokawa) goes in pursuit.

Jimi, a computer game designer, finds that his latest product has been infected by a virus which has given consciousness to the main character of the game, Solo. Tormented by the memory of his fled girlfriend Lisa and begged by Solo to end its useless "life", Jimi begins a search for people who can help him both to discover what happened to Lisa and to delete his game before it is released.

A man receives a mysterious e-mail appearing to be from his wife, who was murdered years earlier. As he frantically tries to find out whether she's alive, he finds himself being implicated in her death.

A delightful dramatic comedy, a buddy picture, and, for good measure, a heist film. Curmudgeonly old Frank lives by himself. His routine involves daily visits to his local library, where he has a twinkle in his eye for the librarian. His grown children are concerned about their father’s well-being and buy him a caretaker robot. Initially resistant to the idea, Frank soon appreciates the benefits of robotic support – like nutritious meals and a clean house – and eventually begins to treat his robot like a true companion. With his robot’s assistance, Frank’s passion for his old, unlawful profession is reignited, for better or worse.

The feature film directing debut of Spike Lee protege Lee Davis takes the viewer into the world of taxi drivers. Developed in the Sundance Laboratory, this film offers dove-tailing stories centering on the lives of individual taxi drivers as they reflect on and experience romance, politics, sociology, and spirituality.

In a future Earth barren of all flora and fauna, the planet's ecosystems exist only in large pods attached to spacecraft. When word comes in that the pods are to be jettisoned into space and destroyed so that the spacecraft can be reused for commercial purposes, most of the crew of the Valley Forge rejoice at the prospect of going home. Not so for botanist Freeman Lowell who loves the forest and its creatures, so decides to take matters into his own hands to protect what he loves.

There is a war in the world between the men and the women. A young girl tries to escape this reality and comes to a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old woman that never leaves her bed but stays in contact with the world through her radio.

The same man lives out several parallel lives in different "worlds" and in different relationships at the same time.

Confessions of a Call Girl is a revealing story of a women's struggle for balance as she battles a secret addiction while fighting to save her family and find herself.

Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others' surrogates.

Paris 2047. Most of the population spend all their time online, connected into virtual worlds, and don't care anymore about reality. A shadow agent, Nash, working for one of the multinational companies behind these virtual worlds, is tracking down terrorists who threaten the system...

During a spaghetti western screening a man is shot dead, the doors are locked and the police is called in to investigate.