The PariahMovies like The Pariah
- Key Features:
- Crime, Gang violence, Friendship, Survival, Betrayal, Prison, Organized crime, Law enforcement, Criminal underworld, Male bonding, Violence-high
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Fans of crime dramas, Viewers interested in gangster films, Those seeking stories of survival and betrayal, Audiences who appreciate gritty realism
- Emotional Arc:
- Loyalty → Despair
The Pariah

For more than 15 years, two Marseille friends and criminals battle the law, rival gangs, prison authorities and even mined beaches in order to survive.
The Pariah
In 1930s Marseilles two small-time crooks decide to join forces when they meet while brawling over a woman. Starting with fixed horse races and boxing matches, they soon find themselves doing jobs for the local gangster bosses. When they decide to go into the business for themselves, their easy-going approach to crime starts to change.

Marseille. Heaps of flowers and funeral wreaths... "A man who no longer defends his colors is no longer a man."

One of the members of a gang of thieves commits a serious mistake that force them to work for a ruthless gang of drug dealers, endangering the future of the team, their lives and those of their families.

A Parisian criminal gang fall apart after challenges to the gang's leader lessen his influence.

After growing up in a poor gypsy camp, Edmond Vidal, aka Momon, has retained a sense of family, unfailing loyalty and pride in his origins. Most of all, he has remained friends with Serge Suttel, with whom he first discovered prison life - for stealing cherries. The two of them inevitably got involved in organized crime. The team they formed, the Ganf Des Lyonnais, made them the most notorious armed robbers of the early 1970s. Their irresistible rise ended in 1974 with a spectacular arrest. Today, as he nears 60, Momon would like to forget that part of his life. He has found peace by retiring from the "business". He tends to his wife Janou, who suffered so in the past, and to his children and grandchildren, all of whom have great respect for this man of simple and universal values, so clear-headed and full of kindness. But then Serge Suttel, who has disowned nothing of his past, comes back into the picture.

Caught in the crosshairs of police corruption and Marseille’s warring gangs, a loyal cop must protect his squad by taking matters into his own hands.

Philippe Jordan is a policeman prone to advancing the cause of justice by any means necessary. On his agenda is a powerful drug cartel working out of Paris and Marseilles, with a drug lord who is essentially inaccessible -- but not immortal.

Enigmatic gangster Silien may or may not be responsible for informing on Faugel, who was just released from prison and is already involved in what should be a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust?

A police brigade works in the dangerous northern neighborhoods of Marseille, where the level of crime is higher than anywhere else in France.

The story of a group of friends in turn of the century New York, from their early days as street hoods to their rise in the world of organized crime...

A hitman finds himself embroiled in the middle of a Mafia war between the Sicilians and the Calabrians.

A gangster escapes jail and quickly makes plans to continue his criminal ways elsewhere, but a determined inspector is closing in.

A friendship is formed between an ex-gangster, and two groups of hitmen - those who want to protect him and those who were sent to kill him.

A former crook is pulled out of retirement when a gang on the run turn to him for shelter after a prison break.

A former bank robber is released after 10 years in prison. He gets help from a social-worker, but gets harassed by an old cop from his past.

The Gamache, tailors from father to son, have been dressing the Mafia family Paternò for three generation. Vincent "Vince" Gamache works on behalf of Frank the godfather with his eldest son Giaco. Vince, reckless and rash, seeks to earn his stripes by impressing the godfather. Without the Paternò knowing, he stages a big operation and is promoted. Fuming with jealousy, Giaco discovers that Vince committed a monstrous act during his stroke. The Gamache disown Vince and war begins.

As a rowdy team of detectives clashes with their disciplined new boss, they must catch a vicious band of robbers who are wreaking havoc on their city.

Daniel leaves prison. He returns to Marseilles where Mathilda, his daughter, has just given birth. Nicolas, her spouse, a self-employed driver, is exhausted while Mathilda is a sales assistant on a trial basis. But, one night, Nicolas is assaulted by taxi drivers determined to reduce unfair competition.

Melissa is an experienced, exemplary prison guard. But a dangerous spiral is set into motion when she transfers to a Corsican jail, where she accepts help and protection from inmate Saveriu to get her bearings. Upon his release, he contacts Melissa expecting to collect.

An ambitious mobster plans an elaborate diamond heist while seducing the daughter-in-law of a ruthless mob patriarch as a determined police commissioner closes in on all of them.

Driss and Manuel both grew up on the same council estate. An estate where the sense of belonging to your patch is much stronger than the sense of belonging to a country, a nation or a culture... Manuel has assimilated this belonging, and he has even benefited from it and built his life on it. Driss, meanwhile, has shunned it. They will both have to face up to the consequences of their decisions – because they will each have a price to pay…

A gang of teenage boys stalk the streets of Naples armed with hand guns and AK-47s to do their mob bosses' bidding – until they decide to be the bosses themselves.

An imprisoned ex-police inspector discovers that the entire penitentiary is controlled by an inmate running a crime syndicate and becomes part of the crime empire.

After serving prison time for a juvenile offense, Freddo gathers his old buddies Libano and Dandi and embarks on a crime spree that makes the trio the most powerful gangsters in Rome. Libano loves their new status, and seeks to spread their influence throughout the underworld, while the other two pursue more fleshly desires. For decades, their gang perpetrates extravagant crimes, until paranoia threatens to split the friends apart.

The Malakian clan, a family of ruthless gangsters, controls the underworld of Southern France. At its head, the violent godfather Milo Malakian rules his world with an iron fist. His son and heir, Anton, dreams of breaking free and making his own choices. But the gang's inner circle is engraved in blood. To escape, not only does Anton have to counter his own destiny, but also the man who has sworn to bring his father down.

A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.

A middle-aged sales rep drops everything to track down the killers of his cop friend. Two years earlier, an older gambler forms an intense bond with a naive young man, who changes his name to please him.

Best buddies Acerola and Laranjinha, about to turn 18, discover things about their missing fathers' pasts which will shatter their solid friendship, in the middle of a war between rival drug gangs from Rio's favelas.

Four prison inmates have been hatching a plan to literally dig out of jail when another prisoner, Claude Gaspard, is moved into their cell. They take a risk and share their plan with the newcomer. Over the course of three days, the prisoners and friends break through the concrete floor using a bed post and begin to make their way through the sewer system -- yet their escape is anything but assured.

A hitman is double-crossed by his girlfriend and barely escapes a murder attempt. He then sets out to take his revenge on the woman and the gang boss who put her up to it.

This South African movie tracks the rise of a once-petty criminal to the heights of the criminal underworld. After cutting his teeth on hijacking, before moving onto bigger game, an ambitious man hits a setback when most of his gang are shot.

Newly transferred to the bustling port city of Marseille to assist with a crackdown on organized crime, energetic young magistrate Pierre Michel is given a rapid-fire tutorial on the ins and outs of an out-of-control drug trade. Pierre's wildly ambitious mission is to take on the French Connection, a highly organized operation that controls the city's underground heroin economy and is overseen by the notorious —and reputedly untouchable— Gaetan Zampa. Fearless, determined and willing to go the distance, Pierre plunges into an underworld world of insane danger and ruthless criminals.

In a port city, the lives of a few isolated people, used to violence, are strongly influenced by the love they feel for each other. Choices, envy, love and tenderness are the driving forces that help these characters to be themselves and give meaning to their lives. A tribute to poetry, theatre and art.

Jong-dae and Yong-ki make a living by picking up paper and empty bottles. Both then join different gangster clan and becomes involved in a struggle of political interests over development in Gangnam, Seoul.

In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.

An old gangster is advised that Freddie Mays would leave jail after thirty years in prison. His mood changes and he recalls when he was a young punk and who joined Freddie's gang—a man he both envied and ultimately betrayed.

Jae-ho, who aims to become the number one in a crime organization, gets to build up trust with Hyun-su, an ambitious newbie in the prison. While they try to take over the organization after the prison release, their ulterior motives starts to emerge.

Two brothers, on either side of the law, face off over organized crime in Brooklyn during the 1970s.

An imprisoned murderer carries out a violent bid for control of Naples' underworld crime syndicate.

A cop goes up against his lifelong friend, who has become one of the city's biggest drug traffickers.

Simon, a Jewish police inspector, arrests Karim, a Muslim, in the bust of a drug smuggling cargo ship, only to realize that Karim is an undercover agent from the military intelligence, whose mission he was not aware of. The two men pursue the narc investigation, which will lead them to confront middle eastern terrorists together.

Paris, 1984. A group of friends contend with the first outbreak of the AIDS epidemic.

Antonio's first day as a thief is marked by tears. During an incursion at the mall, his mother is arrested. Some 20 years later, Antonio along with his two inseparable friends, after some minor robberies, take on a post office. Things don't go as planned.

In the near future, the southern Italian city of Taranto is surrounded by barbed wire that no one, not even the police, dares to cross. The poorest are left fighting for survival, while gangs compete for the territory. Two thirteen-year-old orphans who grew up together, dream of joining one of the gangs.

Tommy Bundy and Sincere are best friends as well as infamous and ruthless criminals and shot-callers in the hood. Respected by many but feared by all. As the police are closing in on them and new players are looking for a come up, will their reign last?

A former fighter must find the missing son of an opponent he accidentally killed years ago, taking on a brutally violent crime gang in Marseille.

When a tough yakuza gangster is betrayed by his bosses, it means all out war. Bodies pile up as he takes out everyone in his way to the top in a brutal quest for revenge.

A slacker who does his best to avoid confrontation strikes up an unlikely friendship with a dangerous thug who suddenly forces his way into his life.

A family man convicted of killing an intruder must cope with life afterward in the violent penal system.

Chouf: It means “look” in Arabic, but it is also the name of the watchmen in the drug cartels of Marseille. Sofiane is 20. A brilliant student, he comes back to spend his holiday in the Marseille ghetto where he was born. His brother, a dealer, gets shot before his eyes. Sofiane gives up on his studies and gets involved in the drug network, ready to avenge him. He quickly rises to the top and becomes the boss’s right hand. Trapped by the system, Sofiane is dragged into a spiral of violence…

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.

A two-bit criminal takes on the Mafia to avenge his brother's death. Earl Macklin is a small time criminal who is released from prison after an unsuccessful bank robbery only to discover that a pair of gunmen killed his brother.

An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.

An inside look at Italy's modern-day crime families, the Camorra in Naples and Caserta. Based on a book by Roberto Saviano. Power, money and blood: these are the "values" that the residents of the Province of Naples and Caserta have to face every day. They hardly ever have a choice and are forced to obey the rules of the Camorra. Only a lucky few can even think of leading a normal life.

Antwerp, Belgium. The lives of four small-time drug dealers spin out of control when they steal a shipment of cocaine, triggering a full out war between an Amsterdam drug lord and a ruthless Colombian cartel.

Three friends are arrested after committing an accident with their car. After finishing their sentence, they become partners with the owner of a decoration workshop. But he deceives them and spends the money in gambling. They force him to sign a waiver of his workshop but he wants to get it back.

A retired mobster goes on a revenge spree after being left for dead with 22 bullets in his body by his former childhood friend.

Henri, the Man from Nantes, comes back to his country after a successful stay in the United States, where he was working for Liski, the drug dealer. With the fame of being a tough guy preceding him, he sets himself to the task of knowing why the French operations were not so profitable - and soon he is master of all links of the organization. He can now get it honed to perfection - or destroy it. Only... the Police are following his every step.

At the end of the 19th century, during a ball in Joinville, on the outskirts of Paris, Georges, a former delinquent working as a carpenter, meets Marie, a young woman connected to a criminal gang.

Emile Chenal and his wife, Françoise, leaned on boxing manager Jim Fox Warner to cough up the considerable sum of money that he owes them, with both the police and the mob circling the situation. In the same hotel, Inspector Neveu looks into a murder that took place years before, and his storyline overlaps with the arc of the Chenals.

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

Gabriel, Bobby and Costa are old friends from Altona, a multicultural hood in Hamburg. Just out of prison, Gabriel wants to turn his back on crime, but the others continue to operate as petty criminals. Friendships are tested as the trio navigate a dark world of mafia bosses and deals gone wrong.

Alain Lefevre is a boxer paid by a Marseille mobster to take a dive. When he wins the fight he attempts to flee to America with the mobster's girlfriend Katrina. This plan fails and he seeks escape by joining the foreign legion. As part of the legion he tangles with abusive lieutenant Steinkampf and bonds with legionnaires Luther, Mackintosh and Rosetti.

Twenty year old Antoine has made enemies of a gang of young thugs, to whom he owes money. Fed up with his scams and petty crimes, his mother and older brother decide to send Antoine to his father's place in Saint-Etienne. The two men haven't seen each other for several years.

Tae-su, a detective fighting organized crime, returns to his hometown for his high school friend Wang-jae's funeral. There, he meets his old friends Pil-ho, Dong-hwan and Seok-hwan and they reminisce. Suspecting something fishy about Wang-jae's death, Tae-su and Seok-hwan start investigating it, each in his own way. Their investigations lead to a land development project that Pil-ho is directing.

Vincent, a police officer, and his partner Manuel steal a large amount of cocaine from José Marciano, a ruthless crime lord who is quick to seek revenge, endangering Vincent's life, career and family.

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

Ukraine, 1990s. Young Vova, cruel and tenacious, struggles to find his place among the ruthless members of the underworld in a city where crime and corruption reign.

After pulling off a bank robbery two bandits meet in a deserted mining town to divide their loot but an old miner tries to steal it from them.

During his 18 years in Folsom Prison, street-gang leader Santana rules over all the drug-and-murder activities behind bars. Upon his release, Santana goes back to his old neighborhood, intending to lead a peaceful, crime-free life. But his old gang buddies force him back into his old habits.

A corrupt customs official joins forces with a vicious gangster to form the most powerful crime partnership in Busan.

Two American expatriates, Jack and Sam, unwittingly steal a drug lord's money when they rob a series of banks in Southeast Asia and become the target of the gang's vengeance.

Alice Tomaso gets out of jail, and goes looking for Léo and Julien, one of whom, it appears, is her father. On the way, she steals the wrong car - one belonging to the Russian mafia, and arrives at her destination with a gang of thugs out looking for her and the car.

A mob hitman wants to retire, but his bosses don't think that's a good idea. Complications - and many bloody shootouts - ensue.

A drug kingpin's rise and tragic fall is witnessed vicariously by a reporter who uses the criminal's diary as the basis for his new book.

A young man named Satya comes to Mumbai from South India in search of a job. Jailed for something he did not do, the once-honest young man meets an underworld boss, Bhiku Mhatre in jail and joins his gang.

When French criminal Corey gets released from prison, he resolves to never return. He is quickly pulled back into the underworld, however, after a chance encounter with escaped murderer Vogel. Along with former policeman and current alcoholic Jansen, they plot an intricate jewel heist. All the while, quirky Police Commissioner Mattei, who was the one to lose custody of Vogel, is determined to find him.

A detective breaks all rules of ethical conduct while investigating a colleague’s involvement in drug pushing and Yakuza activities.

A small-time thug who collects debts for the local triad is torn between his criminal aspirations and his devotion to family.

Faced with the insistence of his brother Joseph, whom he has not seen for 25 years, Paolo resolves to give up his calm and harmonious life in Canada, to return to Marseilles at the bedside of his rugged father. He left, therefore, with his son under his arm, determined not to linger in that city which he had fled years before, after a tragedy. He does not imagine that the affection of his newfound family, his love affair with a young woman and the joyful and simple solidarity of the Marseillais will reconcile him with this city he would never have wanted to leave...Marseillle.

Danila goes to his successful brother, Victor, in Petersburg to start a new life. Unknown to Danila, Victor is a contract killer, but is in hiding after asking for too much money to assassinate a Chechen mob boss. To avoid exposure, Victor convinces Danila to kill the boss instead.

The story of America's most famous mobsters and their rise to power. Examine Al Capone's ascension through the eyes of his second in command, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn.

A Los Angeles detective is sent to New York where he must solve a case involving an old Sicilian Mafia family feud.

From petty theft on the benches of Belleville to the over-publicised hold-ups of the large Parisian banks, this is the spectacular rise of Simon and his gang. They are capable of emptying a series of safes under the very nose of the police who are bewildered by the calm audacity shown by the group.

A bunch of crooked cops raid a ruined building located in an impoverished suburb of Paris, determined to furiously avenge the death of one of them, murdered by the ruthless criminal gang hidden on top of the dark labyrinth that will become a deathly trap when the living, unexpectedly turned into the undead by a mysterious plague, begin to devour the world.

When a gang of robbers provokes chaos in Paris and humiliates the police, the Minister of the Interior wants new blood at the helm of the investigation: Alia is from Marseille, fiery-tempered and unmanageable, Hugo is Parisian, valedictorian and meticulous. In short, they have every reason to hate each other. A forced alliance, for better or for worse, or maybe blossoming into something else?

A man meets up with two "good guys" to recover what is unlawfully his, taking them on his whirlwind ride, doing things they never would have imagined, just to survive.

Pierre Belcroix and Marcel Blanc are violinists and lifelong friends living in Paris in the 1920s. While Marcel has become famous and Pierre has not, both are happy with their lives. Pierre is happily married to Romaine, a stylish young flapper. However, Marcel meets and falls in love with her, which Marcel little suspects.

Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.

An aging hood is about to go back to prison. Hoping to escape his fate, he supplies information on stolen guns to the feds, while simultaneously supplying arms to his bank robbing chums.

Hoping to raise enough capital to finance a legitimate business and leave behind his life of crime, Liverpool underworld boss Ged Brennan sends his brother Ratter and a crew to pull a daring final heist. But when Ratter kills a drug kingpin during the job, Brennan must turn to rival crook Franner to avert an all-out gangland war.

Mick O'Brien is a young Chicago street thug torn between a life of petty crime and the love of his girlfriend. But when the heist of a local drug dealer goes tragically wrong Mick is sentenced to a brutal juvenile prison where violence is a rite of passage and respect is measured in vengeance.

Zachary, 17 years old, gets out of jail. Rejected by his mother, he hangs out in the mean streets of Marseille. He falls in love with Shéhérazade, a young prostitute of whom he becomes the pimp without realizing it...

Mangin, a police inspector in Paris, leans hard on informants to get evidence on three Tunisian brothers who traffic in drugs. He arrests one, Simon, and his girl-friend Noria. Simon's brothers go to their lawyer. He springs Noria, who promptly steals 2 million francs that belong to the Tunisians. They suspect her of the theft; her life as well as the lawyer's is in danger. Meanwhile, Noria is playing with both the lawyer and Mangin's affections. Mangin is mercurial anyway: intimidating and bloodying suspects, falling for a police commission trainee before flipping for Noria, wearing his emotions on his sleeve. Can he save the lawyer and Noria, and can he convince her to love?

Palermo, Sicily, 1980. Mafia member Tommaso Buscetta decides to move to Brazil with his family fleeing the constant war between the different clans of the criminal organization. But when, after living several misfortunes, he is forced to return to Italy, he makes a bold decision that will change his life and the destiny of Cosa Nostra forever.

When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.

Sentenced to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena is alone in the world and can neither read nor write. On his arrival at the prison, he seems younger and more brittle than the others detained there. At once he falls under the sway of a group of Corsicans who enforce their rule in the prison. As the 'missions' go by, he toughens himself and wins the confidence of the Corsican group.

As a heat wave brings a Marseille neighbourhood to the boil, three roommates gleefully meddle in the lives of their neighbours from their balcony. Until a late night drink turns into a bloody affair.

