BreakingMovies like Breaking
- Key Features:
- Hostage situation, Bank robbery, War veteran, Mental health, Desperation, Police procedural, Social commentary, Financial hardship, Violence-moderate
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Crime drama viewers, Military-themed film enthusiasts, Thriller fans
- Emotional Arc:
- Anxiety → Desperation → Resignation
Breaking

Desperate for money and running out of options, Marine veteran Brian Brown-Easley holds several people hostage inside a bank, setting the stage for a tense confrontation with police.
Breaking
A father is without the means to pay for his daughter's medical treatment. As a last resort, he partners with a greedy co-worker to rob a casino. When things go awry they're forced to hijack a city bus.

Battle-hardened O’Hara leads a lively mercenary team of soldiers on a daring mission: rescue hostages from their captors in remote Africa. But as the mission goes awry and the team is stranded, O’Hara’s squad must face a bloody, brutal encounter with a gang of rebels.

A returning war veteran, stricken with PTSD, gets trapped with his teenage sister on Boston's Tobin Memorial Bridge when a heavily armed group of ex-military revolutionaries take everyone hostage.

What will be her last straw? A devastatingly bad day pushes a hardworking single mother to the breaking point — and into a shocking act of desperation.

On the streets they call cash dead presidents. And that's just what a Vietnam veteran is after when he returns home from the war only to find himself drawn into a life of crime. With the aid of his fellow vets he plans the ultimate heist -- a daring robbery of an armored car filled with unmarked U.S. currency!

A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty by the Army.

Decorated veteran Will Sharp, desperate for money to cover his wife's medical bills, asks for help from his adoptive brother Danny. A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million.

A former Marine races against time to save a group of hostages -- including his young daughter and a congressman — when armed militants take over his stepfather's store.

When an armed, masked gang enter a Manhattan bank, lock the doors and take hostages, the detective assigned to effect their release enters negotiations preoccupied with corruption charges he is facing.

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.

Caught in the middle of a bank robbery, a slacker and a bank employee become the ones who arbitrate the intense situation.

A typical night for veterans at a VFW turns into an all-out battle for survival when a desperate teen runs into the bar with a bag of stolen drugs. When a gang of violent punks come looking for her, the vets use every weapon at their disposal to protect the girl and themselves from an unrelenting attack.

When U.S. Rangers and an elite Delta Force team attempt to kidnap two underlings of a Somali warlord, their Black Hawk helicopters are shot down, and the Americans suffer heavy casualties, facing intense fighting from the militia on the ground.

Inspired by one of the longest and bloodiest real-life events in police history, Officer Mike Chandler and a young civilian passenger find themselves under-prepared and outgunned when fate puts them squarely in the crosshairs of a daring bank heist in progress by a fearless team of highly-trained and heavily-armed men.

Shaun Russell takes her son and daughter on a weekend getaway to her late father's secluded, high-tech vacation home in the countryside. The family soon gets an unwelcome surprise when four men break into the house to find hidden money. After managing to escape, Shaun must now figure out a way to turn the tables on the desperate thieves and save her captive children.

After their bank heist goes wrong, a desperate criminal, his out-of-control brother, and their motley crew of ex-marines must escape New Orleans, United States.

Cal is a dedicated cop who also serves as a sergeant in the Marine Corps Reserve. When his reckless half brother lands in jail for accidentally killing a man, Cal and his buddies hatch a plan to break him out of prison -- no matter what the cost.

Soldier Robert Miller returns home from Afghanistan unable to fit back into society. Living on a violent council estate and finding work in undercover surveillance, he becomes obsessed with taking down a group of local gangsters who are intrinsically tied to a suspected terrorist cell. Taking the situation into his own hands, Robert embarks on a brutal quest for justice, with devastating consequences.

Financial TV host Lee Gates and his producer Patty are put in an extreme situation when an irate investor takes over their studio.

A nurse is forced to spring a wounded murder suspect from the hospital when the man’s brother kidnaps his pregnant wife and wants to make a trade.

Former SWAT leader David Hendrix and hard-partying movie star Brody Walker must cut their ride-along short when a police training facility is attacked by a team of mercenaries.

A troubled veteran gets a chance at redemption by protecting a girl from an assassin after she witnesses a murder. Holding a shotgun with a single shell, he engages in physical and psychological warfare in a desperate fight for the girl's life.

Double-crossed after a bank heist, a team of professional thieves attempts an even more challenging mission: returning the money they stole.

Four inner-city Black women, determined to end their constant struggle, decide to live by one rule — get what you want or die trying. So the four women take back their lives and take out some banks in the process.

Two brothers, both with troubled paths, find themselves in the middle of one last bank job.

While doing a friend a favor and searching for a runaway teenager, a police detective stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery.

What should have been a romantic getaway turns into one hilarious debacle after another when Michael's woman dumps him in the desert where he gets carjacked by a teenager and he is taken hostage in a stickup at the local Sip and Zip.

An ex-military doctor finds herself in a deadly battle for survival when the Irish mafia seize control of the hospital at which she works. When her son is taken hostage, she is forced to rely upon her battle-hardened past and lethal skills after realizing there’s no one left to save the day but her.

Sam and Fordy run a credit card fraud scheme, but when they steal from the wrong man, they find themselves threatened by sadistic gangster. They need to raise £5m and pull off a daring diamond heist to clear their debt.

During the bloody war in Chechnya, a British couple and two Russian soldiers are taken hostage by Chechen rebels. Two of the hostages are then released to bring the money for the British woman who is forced to wait for the ransom.

A bank robber tries to turn himself in because he's falling in love and wants to live an honest life...but when he realizes the Feds are more corrupt than him, he must fight back to clear his name.

When a young soldier, newly returned from war, gets caught up in a drug bust, he is recruited by the authorities to go undercover in a notoriously dangerous prison in order to figure out what is really going on.

After a bank job goes badly wrong, three desperate criminals take a young woman and a father and child hostage - it's the beginning of a frantic and violent road trip that not all of them will survive.

The wife of a photojournalist sets out to discover why he came home from a recent assignment without his colleague.

A divorced dad and his ex-con brother resort to a desperate scheme in order to save their family's farm in West Texas.

Following the attack on the black site in Poland, Navy SEAL Jake Harris is ordered to escort terrorist suspect Amin Mansur to Washington D.C. for interrogation. Before the prisoner transfer process is complete, though, the airport is attacked by a group of heavily armed, well-trained mercenaries.

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

After a heroic job of successfully landing his storm-damaged aircraft in a war zone, a fearless pilot finds himself between the agendas of multiple militias planning to take the plane and its passengers hostage.

Lonely, unstable gas station attendant Melinda is tired of being overshadowed by her more confident, outgoing co-worker Sheila. When the gas station is held up at gunpoint by Billy, a desperate man in need of quick cash, Melinda finds an opportunity to make a connection with the robber, regardless of who gets hurt.

Desperate for income, Emily takes a shady gig buying goods with stolen credit cards supplied by a charismatic middleman named Youcef. Seduced by the quick cash and illicit thrills, they hatch a plan to take their business to the next level.

A disgruntled ex-CIA operative, his assistant and their assembled group of terrorists seize a battleship with nuclear blackmail in mind. They've planned for every contingency but ignore the ship's cook, former Navy SEAL Casey Ryback—an error that could be fatal.

Decorated army veteran Jason Hill is on a routine visit to the local VA hospital when organized terrorists infiltrate the building and take hostages, including a decorated general, and Hill’s wife. The highly trained veteran is outnumbered and the last line of defense, taking on a building full of armed insurgents before it’s too late.

Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With his wife suffering from leukemia and his business partner paralyzed from a brutal gangster attack, Nishi borrows from a yakuza loan shark and then robs a bank to clear his debt.

After a disastrous failure to stop a robber gang, the police attempt to redeem themselves through a series of publicity stunts and shootouts.

A bank heist descends into violent chaos when one of the hostages turns out to be a serial killer. Trapping the well-organized team of bank robbers in the building, the killer is now picking them off one by one.

A Danish officer, Michael, is sent away to the International Security Assistance Force operation in Afghanistan for three months. His first mission there is to find a young radar technician who had been separated from his squad some days earlier. While on the search, his helicopter is shot down and he is taken as a prisoner of war, but is reported dead to the family.

A seasoned team of bank robbers, including Gordon Jennings, John Rahway, A.J., and brothers Jake and Jesse Attica successfully complete their latest heist and lead a life of luxury while planning their next job. When Ghost, a former member of their team, is released from prison he convinces the group to strike an armored car carrying $20 million. As the "Takers" carefully plot out their strategy and draw nearer to exacting the grand heist, a reckless police officer inches closer to apprehending the criminals.

A broke mechanic turns a bank loan denial into an impromptu robbery that puts him on the run with his best friend and a starlet they hold hostage.

Adam Buckley finds himself in the middle of a convenience store robbery during his last night as a pledge for a college fraternity. When the initiation ritual goes horribly wrong, and every move proves disastrous, Adam is forced to confront a new challenge all together, and he has to take a stand.

British soldiers guarding the Kajaki Dam set out to rescue a three-man team after one of them loses a leg to a landmine.

Three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.

Between his tax problems and his legal battle with his wife for the custody of his daughter, these are hard times for the action movie star who finds that even Steven Seagal has pinched a role from him! This fictionalized version of Jean-Claude Van Damme returns to the country of his birth to seek the peace and tranquility he can no longer enjoy in the United States, but inadvertently gets involved in a bank robbery with hostages.

A diplomatic official is captured and imprisoned while touring a war zone, so a team of elite female commandos is assembled to infiltrate a women's prison for a daring rescue.

A group of diamond thieves on the run kidnap the wife of a recently discharged marine who goes on a chase through the South Carolinian wilderness to retrieve her.

Three hooded Eastern-European criminals burst into a home in a Madrid gated community, holding the family hostage in its own home, and forcing the father to empty his credit cards. But the family fights back - brutally.

Based on a miraculous true story that drew the attention of the entire nation, is the dramatic, thrilling, and spiritual journey of Ashley Smith and Brian Nichols. After being taken hostage by Brian in her own apartment, Ashley turns to Rick Warren’s inspirational book, The Purpose Driven Life, for guidance. In reading from the book, Ashley not only finds purpose in her own life, but helps Brian find a more peaceful resolution to a harrowing situation.

After getting screwed over by life (again), two losers decide that enough is enough. Using stolen ski masks and stolen toy guns, they take hostages in their local bank, holding them for ransom. Things go well until the hostages learn what's going on, and demand a piece of the action for themselves.

Navy SEAL Lieutenant A.K. Waters and his elite squadron of tactical specialists are forced to choose between their duty and their humanity, between following orders by ignoring the conflict that surrounds them, or finding the courage to follow their conscience and protect a group of innocent refugees. When the democratic government of Nigeria collapses and the country is taken over by a ruthless military dictator, Waters, a fiercely loyal and hardened veteran is dispatched on a routine mission to retrieve a Doctors Without Borders physician.

Victoria is a young mother trying to put her dark past as a Russian drug courier behind her, but retired cop Damon forces Victoria to do his bidding by holding her daughter hostage. Now, Victoria must use guns, guts and a motorcycle to take out a series of violent gangsters—or she may never see her child again.

The Driver is hired by the FBI to help defuse a hostage situation. A disgruntled employee has kidnapped a CEO and has hidden her, demanding $5,088,042. The Driver delivers the money, writing the sum on his hand as instructed by the hostage taker. After he is told that he holds the life of a person in his hand, he is ordered to burn the money. As he complies, the federal agents break in and attempt to subdue the man, who shoots himself in the head before he reveals where the woman is hidden. The Driver then tries to find the hostage before she drowns in the trunk of a sinking car. As a twist, the kidnapped woman is revealed to be the hostage taker's lover. She coldly taunts the dying man in the hospital.

A Marine must do whatever it takes to save his kidnapped sister and stop a terrorist attack masterminded by a radical militia group.

Master thief Will Montgomery is just released from the State penitentiary after serving a 10 year sentence, is contacted by Vincent, his ex comrade in crime, who is holding Will’s teenage daughter ransom in a hijacked taxi cab. Vincent will only surrender her when Will reveals the whereabouts of the 20 million dollars he contrived to conceal from their last robbery.

Struggling to make ends meet, former special ops soldiers reunite for a high-stakes heist: stealing $75 million from a South American drug lord.

John Quincy Archibald is a father and husband whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart and then finds out he cannot receive a transplant because HMO insurance will not cover it. Therefore, he decides to take a hospital full of patients hostage until the hospital puts his son's name on the donor's list.

After a failed sabotage mission, a trio of anti-apartheid freedom fighters ends up in a tense bank hostage situation. Based on a true story.

When a gunman enters an Apple Store in the heart of Amsterdam, the police face a delicate challenge to resolve the standoff.

A man caught in the middle of two simultaneous robberies at a bank desperately tries to protect the teller with whom he's secretly in love.

On the day of the U.S. presidential election in 2024, a team of elite mercenaries embark on a secret CIA mission to abduct North Korea's politician in an underground bunker below the Korean Demilitarized Zone. However, they get caught in the crossfire which causes tensions to escalate to the brink of World War III.

A businessman, on his daily commute home, gets unwittingly caught up in a criminal conspiracy that threatens not only his life but the lives of those around him.

A young man receives an emergency phone call on his cell phone from an older woman. She claims to have been kidnapped – and the kidnappers have targeted her husband and child next.

Four friends become stranded in Eastern Europe and have to become hit men, prostitutes, corrupt cops, smugglers and more to make it home.

A man goes on a bold and reckless journey of self-liberation through London. After he robs a bank he releases a wilder version of himself, ultimately experiencing what it feels like to be alive.

When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, everyman Nate turns his inability to feel pain into an unexpected strength in his fight to get her back.

While awaiting the next fuel truck at a middle-of-nowhere Arizona rest stop, a traveling young knife salesman is thrust into a high-stakes hostage situation by the arrival of two similarly stranded bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty—or cold, hard steel—to protect their bloodstained, ill-gotten fortune.

A Secret Service Agent is held captive in the trunk of a car and endures high-speed mental and physical torture as terrorists attempt to extract needed information for their sinister plot.

The story centers on paroled white supremacist who has just killed a cop, and takes a black family hostage. Within hours of being released from 14 years of solitary confinement in maximum-security Pelican Bay State Prison, Garrett Tully is on the run again. When he finds a house off a dirt road and takes a family hostage, he thinks the Aryan Brotherhood has his back–and his kidnap victims are black. The family’s patriarch, Mr. Walker, is a jaded ex-con who hates cops so much he disavowed his own son for becoming one. Seeing a familiar desperation in Tully, Walker refuses to call the authorities for help, causing familial tensions to escalate, and soon grave missteps are made.

A dangerous CIA renegade resurfaces after a decade on the run. When the safe house he's remanded to is attacked by mercenaries, a rookie operative escapes with him. Now, the unlikely allies must stay alive long enough to uncover who wants them dead.

After escaping from prison, Joe and Terry go on a crime spree, robbing banks through Oregon and California in order to finance their scheme for a new life south of the border. Unfortunately, things get more complicated when they meet Kate, who runs into them with her car. She joins the bandits on their cross-country spree, and eventually she steals something, too: their hearts.

A single mom and her child are carjacked by a bank robber who has no intention of letting them go.

Carlo, a former mobster, is abducted by five privileged young men desperate to raise a $2 million ransom to save the sister of a friend. As Carlo plays mind games, however, his captors splinter -- each wondering whether one of their own had a hand in the crime.

During the United States' 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, a group of female soldiers posing as medical relief are sent back in to rescue a group of kidnapped teenagers caught between ISIS and the Taliban.

Mack is a former soldier who, after the war, moved to a town with a nuclear power plant, where nearly everybody works. Life is peaceful for him there, until a gang of mercenaries led by Ron storm the reactor and take everybody hostage, including a group of children on a school trip. Now Mack is in a race against the clock and must use his military training to defeat Ron before he puts the reactor into meltdown. Along the way he discovers Ron’s motive, which unravels a greater secret Mack’s town is hiding.

A retired British soldier struggles to adjust to everyday life, with increasing difficulty.

A former RAW officer, who is among the hostages in a mall taken over by terrorists, has to foil their plans and prevent the government from releasing a dreaded terrorist, who he had helped put in prison at great personal cost.

Alex is going through a midlife crisis and it has become a very difficult time for him. His marriage is struggling, he's worried about his son, and his job of killing people for his family has become the most stressful part of his life. He seeks the help of a therapist and meets a woman in the waiting room that he connects with.

Malcom's done with his life. Only the noise of Crystal Meth gives him a reason to keep going - everything else it has long regardless. Equipped with a bag full of weapons and self-made bombs, he makes his way to the nearby mall to really stir things up. On his personal war campaign, he not only changes his life radically, but also the fate of other people who are in the wrong place at the same time: a teenager whose favorite pastime is smoking pot in his dreary existence, a housewife, where their best days have been left behind, a greedy businessman whose only desire is to increase his wealth and a depressed pervert.

A special forces team is sent to snuff out a drug den, but find themselves trapped inside it after being set-up and betrayed.

A gang of criminals and corrupt cops plan the murder of a police officer in order to pull off their biggest heist yet across town.

An ex-cop turned con threatens to jump to his death from a Manhattan hotel rooftop. The NYPD dispatch a female police psychologist to talk him down. However, unbeknownst to the police on the scene, the suicide attempt is a cover for the biggest diamond heist ever pulled.

A woman, fired from a financial corporation during the Asia crisis, returns home with no money. However, she finds a box with a fortune in front of her door, and decides to keep it. However, the people that left it there soon want it back.

A disgraced doctor and his family are held hostage at their home by criminals on the run, when a robbery-gone-awry requires them to seek immediate medical attention.

Based on the extraordinary true story of the European city’s 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis that was documented in the 1974 New Yorker article “The Bank Drama” by Daniel Lang. The events grasped the world’s attention when the hostages bonded with their captors and turned against the authorities, giving rise to the psychological phenomenon known as “Stockholm Syndrome.”

Afghanistan. War correspondent Elsa Casanova is taken hostage by the Taliban. Faced with her imminent execution, a Special Forces unit is dispatched to free her. In some of the world’s most breathtaking yet hostile landscapes, a relentless pursuit begins between her kidnappers who have no intention of letting their prey escape them and a group of soldiers who risk their lives in pursuit of their single aim – to bring her home alive. This strong, independent woman and these men of duty are thrown together and forced to confront situations of great danger that inextricably bind them – emotionally, violently and intimately.

When they take some friends on an extreme sport adventure, the last thing Jared and Sam expect to see below the shark-infested waters is a legendary pirate ship rumored to contain millions of dollars in gold. But their good fortune is short-lived, as a ruthless gang of criminals gets word of what they have uncovered.

A platoon of Navy SEALs embarks on a dangerous mission in Ramadi, Iraq, with the chaos and brotherhood of war retold through their memories of the event.

After returning home from a traumatic tour of duty in Iraq, John finds himself struggling with PTSD. What little peace he had managed to build around him is shattered one fateful day when he rescues a local call girl from a group of violent Aryan Brotherhood pimps. Having killed several of the high-ranking brotherhood during the rescue, John and his family are now the prime targets of Hollis, the ruthless criminal leader of the group.

When a small outpost is ambushed, a US Army squad must take the battle below ground on a high-stakes mission in a new type of warfare the likes of which they have never seen.


