
29 Movies Like Stand by Me (1986) You Need to Watch Next
After learning that a boy their age has been accidentally killed near their rural homes, four boys decide to go see the body. Gordie, Vern, Chris, and Teddy encounter a mean junk man and a marsh full
Updated June 2026
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If you loved Stand by Me (1986) by Rob Reiner, here are 29 movies that share its content DNA. iRankMovies measures real similarity using cosine similarity across eight weighted dimensions — genre (50%), tone (12%), pace (10%), structure (8%), era (7%), theme (6%), audience (4%) and narrative perspective (3%) — not just the rating. The closest matches according to our analysis are Thelma & Louise, Road to Perdition, Hell or High Water. Every title is ranked by how closely it matches and backed by the iRank Score, a composite of IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDb across 12,000+ analysed titles.
29 Movies Similar to Stand by Me

Thelma & Louise
1991 · Ridley Scott
Taking a break from their dreary lives, close friends Thelma and Louise embark on a short weekend trip that ends in unforeseen incriminating circumstances. As fugitives, both women rediscover the stre
In common: Crime · Drama

Road to Perdition
2002 · Sam Mendes
Mike Sullivan works as a hit man for crime boss John Rooney. Sullivan views Rooney as a father figure, however after his son is witness to a killing, Mike Sullivan finds himself on the run in attempt
In common: Crime · Drama

Hell or High Water
2016 · David Mackenzie
A divorced dad and his ex-con brother resort to a desperate scheme in order to save their family's farm in West Texas.
In common: Crime · Drama

21
2008 · Robert Luketic
Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent student at M.I.T. who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot affo
In common: Crime · Drama

Trainspotting
1996 · Danny Boyle
Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride
In common: Crime · Drama

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
2017 · Martin McDonagh
After seven months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at Bil
In common: Crime · Drama

The Outsiders
1983 · Francis Ford Coppola
In 1960s Tulsa, class divisions ignite a violent rivalry between the working-class Greasers and the privileged Socs. When a deadly encounter forces two Greasers, Ponyboy and Johnny, to flee, their str
In common: Crime · Drama

Blow
2001 · Ted Demme
A boy named George Jung grows up in a struggling family in the 1950's. His mother nags at her husband as he is trying to make a living for the family. It is finally revealed that George's father canno
In common: Crime · Drama

The Mule
2018 · Clint Eastwood
Earl Stone, a man in his eighties, is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive. Easy enough, but, unbeknownst to Earl, he's just
In common: Crime · Drama

American Hustle
2013 · David O. Russell
A conman and his seductive partner are forced to work for a wild FBI agent, who pushes them into a world of Jersey power-brokers and the Mafia.
In common: Crime · Drama

The Unforgivable
2021 · Nora Fingscheidt
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
In common: Crime · Drama

Just Mercy
2019 · Destin Daniel Cretton
The powerful true story of Harvard-educated lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who goes to Alabama to defend the disenfranchised and wrongly condemned — including Walter McMillian, a man sentenced to death despi
In common: Crime · Drama

Requiem for a Dream
2000 · Darren Aronofsky
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
In common: Crime · Drama

Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey
2018 · Jim Donovan
On the night she plans on taking her own life, 17-year-old 'Lisa McVey' is kidnapped and finds herself fighting to stay alive and is raped. She manages to talk her attacker into releasing her, but whe
In common: Crime · Drama

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
2019 · Joe Berlinger
A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy, from the perspective of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who refused to believe the truth about him for years.
In common: Crime · Drama

The Hate U Give
2018 · George Tillman Jr.
Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two ver
In common: Crime · Drama

Cool Hand Luke
1967 · Stuart Rosenberg
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admi
In common: Crime · Drama

Wall Street
1987 · Oliver Stone
A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider, whom takes the yout
In common: Crime · Drama

The Place Beyond the Pines
2013 · Derek Cianfrance
A motorcycle stunt rider considers committing a crime in order to provide for his wife and child, an act that puts him on a collision course with a cop-turned-politician.
In common: Crime · Drama

Cherry
2021 · Joe Russo
Cherry drifts from college dropout to army medic in Iraq—anchored only by his one true love, Emily. But after returning from the war with PTSD, his life spirals into drugs and crime as he struggles to
In common: Crime · Drama

Freedom Writers
2007 · Richard LaGravenese
A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
In common: Crime · Drama

Papillon
1973 · Franklin J. Schaffner
A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
In common: Crime · Drama

The Shawshank Redemption
1994 · Frank Darabont
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an a
In common: Crime · Drama

Catch Me If You Can
2002 · Steven Spielberg
A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. An FBI agent makes it his
In common: Crime · Drama

Mirror
1975 · Andrei Tarkovsky
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
In common: Crime · Drama

Rain Man
1988 · Barry Levinson
When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 m
In common: Drama

Broker
2022 · Hirokazu Kore-eda
Sang-hyun is always struggling from debt, and Dong-soo works at a baby box facility. On a rainy night, they steal the baby Woo-sung, who was left in the baby box, to sell him at a good price. Meanwhil
In common: Drama

Drive My Car
2021 · Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Mi
In common: Drama

Lolita
1997 · Adrian Lyne
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon
In common: Drama