The GTA series, which includes action, crime, driving, robbery and many other elements, has been on all kinds of game platforms for almost 27 years. Naturally, when criminal elements and especially robbery are involved, it is natural for GTA series games to be inspired by popular crime movies that came before them.
GTA, which has been in a mutual relationship with the cinema industry for years, draws inspiration from well-known films and also manages to be an inspiration for many crime films released after it. If you are ready, let’s take a closer look at what movies are similar to GTA games.
NOTE: While talking about the movies on the list, it is worth noting that we may give spoilers about some GTA games.
GTA similar movie suggestions:
- Taxi Driver – 8.3
- Scarface – 8.3
- Heat (Big Showdown) – 8.2
- Carlito’s Way – 7.9
- The Boondock Saints – 7.8
- Drive – 7.8
- Baby Driver (Full Throttle) – 7.6
- Menace II Society – 7.5
- The Town – 7.5
- Collateral (Night of the Hitman) – 7.5
- Natural Born Killers – 7.3
- Fast Five (Rio Heist) – 7.3
- The Italian Job – 7.0
The Italian Job
- Release date: 2003
- Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller
- IMDb score: 7.0
- Cast: Donald Sutherland, Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton, Jason Statham
One of the themes that GTA series games focus on the most and do not like to include in the game is robbery. Especially in GTA IV and V, the biggest key missions of the games were robberies. These robbery missions may seem familiar to you. The reason for this is that these missions are inspired by famous crime and robbery movies.
The Italian Job, one of the first films inspired by this, is about the stages of a team designing and carrying out their clever plan for a big gold heist. If you remember, we carry out a gold robbery in GTA V’s last robbery mission, The Big Score. One of the biggest inspirations of that mission is this movie.
Fast Five (Rio Heist)
- Release date: 2011
- Genre: Action, Crime, Adventure
- IMDb score: 7.3
- Cast: Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jordana Brewster
Although the Fast and Furious series actually started out differently, over the years it has become a film series focusing on heists with big stunts. Fast Five, the first movie in the series in which the team heads towards a big organized robbery, is very similar to the GTA series games in terms of the atmosphere it creates.
In the movie, our team, trapped between federal agents and the drug mafia, finds the solution by committing a big robbery and gaining their freedom. This scenario is a situation we can encounter in almost every GTA game.
Natural Born Killers
- Release date: 1994
- Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
- IMDb score: 7.3
- Cast: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Rodney Dangerfield
GTA V, one of the most popular games in the GTA series, hosts a character that game lovers will not easily forget. As you guessed it, this character, Trevor, is the most discussed character of GTA V. The reason for this can be summarized as Trevor’s intense addiction to violence.
The movie Natural Born Killers is about a couple who commit murder just for pleasure and to attract media attention. This film, which criticizes the media’s addiction to violence and the way it feeds on it, actually becomes a film that criticizes the harsh criticism that GTA games have received from the media so far.
Collateral (Night of the Hitman)
- Release date: 2004
- Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
- IMDb score: 7.5
- Cast: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo
It is a widely accepted fact that GTA series games do a very good job in terms of character development. During this character development, we generally start from the lowest levels and try to raise our name in the criminal world. The Collateral movie also deals with a mission style that can be found in GTA games.
In this movie between a hitman and a taxi driver, the hitman must eliminate 5 targets in one night to fulfill his contract. Choosing an ordinary taxi driver as his personal driver for that night, the hitman forces this taxi driver to help him in his difficult mission. This situation reminds us a lot of the days when we were driving taxis with Niko in GTA IV.
The Town
- Release date: 2010
- Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
- IMDb score: 7.5
- Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner
One of the most popular points of the GTA series games is that the characters in the games are actually people from the public. These characters, who have little to do with professionalism, lead to very funny situations and realistic gameplay styles. Therefore, the characters we play can make mistakes, and this leads to consequences and realistic gameplay. The movie The Town also brings to the big screen the consequences of the mistake made by the head of a bank robbery team.
The Charlestown area of Boston is famous for theft and thieves’ gangs. Dough MacRay, who leads the bank robbers in this region, puts his team and himself in a very difficult situation as a result of his mistake by falling in love with the bank manager he kidnapped.
Baby Driver (Full Throttle)
- Release date: 2017
- Genre: Action, Crime, Music
- IMDb score: 7.6
- Cast: Ansel Elgort, Jon Bernthal, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez
The GTA series has placed great emphasis on driving since its first games. There are many missions where cars and driving are at the forefront. For this reason, Baby Driver deals with a subject that would not matter if it were a GTA mission. In the movie, Baby, who loves listening to music a lot and prepares his own mixes, is a character who gets involved in the criminal world out of necessity.
We have played and watched many times in GTA games where our characters unintentionally found themselves in the middle of the criminal world. In the movie Baby Driver, Baby, who has almost extraordinary driving skills, works as a getaway driver for robbers. When we think of the GTA character that is most similar to Baby, the first thing that comes to our mind is Franklin from GTA V.
Menace II Society
- Release date: 1993
- Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
- IMDb score: 7.5
- Cast: Tyrin Turner, Larenz Tate, June Kyoto Lu, Toshi Toda
After the movie Boyz ‘N the Hood, which was released in 1991 and revealed the violent side of the city of Compton in the USA, Menace II Society, another masterpiece in the Ghetto genre, appears as a movie with strong ties to GTA: San Andreas. In this movie; We watch Caine Lawson, a young African American who wants to have a better life, just like CJ in the San Andreas game, trying to avoid crime.
Explaining that crime is not a choice but an obligation, Menace II Society actually tells us about CJ’s situation in the game through the character of Caine. In addition, the O-Dog character in the movie inspired the Lamar character in GTA V, while the Hughes Brothers in the movie largely represent the Grove Street Family in San Andreas.
Drive
- Release date: 2011
- Genre: Crime, Drama
- IMDb score: 7.8
- Cast: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks
Drive, which has a scenario that could be a GTA game on its own, is about the double life of a car driver who performs stunts in Hollywood and participates in robberies at night. Our unnamed driver (Ryan Gosling), who drives a very good car, is in the criminal world as the indispensable getaway driver of robberies at night.
The Driver, who agrees to help his beautiful neighbor Irene’s imprisoned husband, finds himself even more immersed in the world of crime. Our character’s only option to escape, putting both his own life and Irene and her child in danger, is to drive.
The Boondock Saints
- Release date: 1999
- Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller
- IMDb score: 7.8
- Cast: Willem Dafoe, Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, David Della Rocco
The Boondock Saints, another movie with a script that can be adapted into a stand-alone GTA game, brings a very interesting anti-hero story to the big screen. As you know, GTA games are based on a series of anti-heroes. In this film, where two Irish brothers fight the evils of the corrupt city of Boston, these two brothers provide justice themselves instead of relying on the police.
Since the people these twins eliminate are generally mafia members and drug dealers, the public does not speak out, and even the FBI agent who goes after the two brothers secretly admires the work done by the City Saints. Saints of the City is just like GTA games with its violence and slang-filled dialogues.
Carlito’s Way
- Release date: 1993
- Genre: Crime, Drama
- IMDb score: 7.9
- Cast: Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller
Carlito’s Way is about a former mafia member who was caught for drugs and imprisoned; It tells the story of him trying to live a decent life by leaving his crime-filled days behind. But as one can easily guess, Carlito’s past comes back to haunt him.
Carlito’s Way, which inspired the GTA games in terms of the characters it contains, also inspires the corrupt lawyer-mafia boss relationship in the GTA Vice City game. The biggest inspiration that Carlito’s Way gives to the GTA series is the Ken Rosenberg character in GTA Vice City. This corrupt lawyer is directly inspired by the character of lawyer Kleinfeld in the movie Carlito’s Way.
Heat (Big Showdown)
- Release date: 1995
- Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller
- IMDb score: 8.2
- Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight
The popular heist movie Heat, featuring a legendary cast of the 90s, inspires not one but two heist missions found in two major GTA games. The armored vehicle robbery mission called Blitz Play in GTA V and the most difficult and biggest mission of the game, Three Leaf Clover in GTA IV, bear great inspiration from this movie.
In this movie, which tells the story of a three-person criminal gang, the police raid as a result of the robbery report is processed almost in the same way as the movie, following the robbery mission we mentioned in GTA IV. In addition to these, the characters in the Three Leaf Clover robbery mission in GTA IV; They carry the same clothes, masks, weapons and money bags as the characters in the movie. In addition, the character of Neil McCauley in the movie later became the inspiration for Michael De Santa in the GTA V game, and Waingro inspired the character of Trevor in GTA V.
Scarface
- Release date: 1983
- Genre: Crime, Drama
- IMDb score: 8.3
- Cast: Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer, Robert Loggia
Scarface, the film from which GTA Vice City, one of the most popular games of the series, was clearly inspired and did not hide it, is one of the most praised films of the 1980s and Al Pacino. In this film, where we watch a criminal named Tony Montana, who immigrated to the USA from Cuba, rise within the mafia, many details, from the character of Tony Montana to the locations in the film, are directly used in the GTA Vice City game.
The atmosphere of Scarface, which took place in Miami in the 1980s, was also used directly in GTA Vice City. In the Vice City game, which has almost the same ending as the movie, Tony Montana’s mansion and the nightclub he goes to are featured exactly. In addition, some of the famous scenes of the movie appear as missions in GTA Vice City.
Taxi Driver
- Release date: 1976
- Genre: Crime, Drama
- IMDb score: 8.3
- Cast: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Leonard Harris
Taxi Driver, considered the best film of successful director Martin Scorsese, also inspires the first driving-oriented and two-dimensional GTA games with its cult character Travis Bickle. Can’t sleep and drives a taxi at night; Travis, a psychopathic character who thinks that all citizens and politicians in the city are corrupt, appears as a supporting character with a mohawk hairstyle in the original GTA game released in 1997.
Although the biggest reference in GTA games to the movie Taxi Driver is the character Travis in the game, there is a secret taxi named Bickle’76 in the Liberty City Stories game, released in 2005. In general, when we think of a psychopath character driving around the city at night, the first thing that comes to mind is GTA games.
We have come to the end of our list of movie recommendations that can capture the atmosphere of the GTA series games while watching. The atmosphere of GTA games can be felt in many period and crime movies due to the crime, robbery and similar elements contained in the games. What do you think about the movies on the list? Which of the movies on the list have you watched? You can share your opinions with us in the comments section.
We will watch the trailer of GTA 6 very soon. For everything you need to know about the GTA 6 series, don’t forget to check out the content below:
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