22 Edgy Movies About Smugglers

The world cinema creates not so many movies about smugglers, and most of them are about smuggling of narcotics and drugs

You will find in our article the most interesting and diverse movies about smuggling of various substances and things, including even your favorite dog! We always try to make your choice of movies easy and pleasant. Suggest your own variants of stories about smuggling in the comments.

American Gangster

• IMDB Rating – 7.8
• Genre: Drama, Crime, Biography
• Production: USA, UK / 2007
• Budget: $100,000,000
• Worldwide box office receipts: $266,465,037
• Director: Ridley Scott
• Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Limarie Nadal, Josh Brolin, Armand Assante, Roger Guenveur Smith, Ruby Dee, John Ortiz, Ted Levine.

Based on true events, the thrilling movie starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe tells the story of the meteoric career of drug dealer Frank Lucas and his long confrontation with incorruptible policeman Richie Roberts.

It all began in the late ’60s. Lucas, after the death of the boss of the mafia, for which he worked as a simple driver, begins independent smuggling of heroin from Southeast Asia. Compared to his competitors, his prices are lower and the quality is better. Pretty soon he becomes a powerful mafia boss. However, in his footsteps follows the stubborn Roberts, who intends to stop Lucas forever. And as the years go by, their relationship changes….

The real Roberts was really Lucas’ lawyer, allowing his sentence to be greatly reduced, and after a years-long standoff, a friend and godfather to his daughter.

Dallas Buyers Club

• IMDB Rating – 7.9
• Genre: Drama, Biography
• Production: USA / 2013
• Budget: $5,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $55,198,285
• Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
• Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Denis O’Hare, Steve Zahn, Michael O’Neill, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne, Kevin O. Rankin, Donna DuPlantier

A movie starring Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto about drug smuggling, based on the true story of Texan Ron Woodroofe.

Ron is the simplest country boy, an electrician by trade and an outgoing rodeo enthusiast. In 1985 he is diagnosed with AIDS, and only fear for his life makes the ignorant redneck delve into the origins of the disease, and at the same time find out that in the U.S. there are no proper medications.

Soon he meets other patients and organizes a “buying club”, starting to smuggle drugs that can prolong the lives of AIDS patients from Japan, the Netherlands and Israel.

The movie had a very low budget, and for the work of makeup artists allocated only 250 dollars. At the same time, the picture won an Oscar for best makeup and hairstyles.

Blood Diamond

• IMDB Rating – 8.0
• Genre: Thriller, Drama, Adventure
• Production: USA, Germany / 2006
• Budget: $100,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $171,720,398
• Director: Edward Zwick
• Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly, Arnold Voslu, Michael Sheen, Caruso Capers, David Harewood, Basil Wallace, Jimi Mistri, Anthony Coleman.

Serious and tough adventure drama with Jennifer Connelly, Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou. The events of the movie are set in Sierra Leone in 1999.

Mercenary and smuggler Danny Archer finds himself in Freetown prison with Solomon, a former fisherman and then an employee of diamond mines. Archer learns from his new acquaintance about a huge, pink-colored, clear diamond that the latter found before his capture.

Soon Freetown is attacked by the revolutionary army, Danny and Solomon escape, and together with the clever journalist Maddy begin their journey to the diamond, which will become very bloody.

The script suggests that Archer has HIV. This could explain some scenes, such as why he won’t let Solomon touch him when he’s bleeding.

Lord of War

• IMDB Rating – 7.6
• Genre: Drama, Crime
• Production: France, Germany, USA / 2005
• Budget: $50,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $72,617,068
• Director: Andrew Niccol
• Starring: Nicolas Cage, Bridget Moynahan, Jared Leto, Ethan Hawke, Ian Holm, Shake Tukhmanian, Jean-Pierre Nshanian, Eamonn Walker, Sammy Rotibi, Yevgeny Lazarev.

“Lord of War” is a movie starring Nicolas Cage, the fictionalized story of Yuri Orlov, an Odessa immigrant who becomes a major arms dealer in the United States and smuggles them to various dictatorships, terrorists and revolutionaries around the world.

As a teenager, having seen a shootout in a restaurant, Yuri thought that weapons will always be the most popular commodity in the world. Gradually he builds up his business with the tacit acquiescence of the authorities. The collapse of the USSR gives a powerful impetus to the development of Orlov’s arms empire.

No American company wanted to sponsor this exposing project. The movie was financed by European countries and filmed in the Czech Republic, South Africa and a little bit in New York.

The Transporter

• IMDB Rating – 6.8
• Genre: Action, Thriller, Crime
• Production: France, USA / 2002
• Budget: €21,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $43,928,932
• Director: Louis Leterrier, Corey Yuen
• Starring: Jason Statham, Shu Qi, Francois Berléand, Matt Schulze, Rick Young, Doug Rand, Didier St. Melin, Tony Descanvelle, Laurent Despond, Matthieu Albertini.

Human smuggling is another category of crime that can’t be dealt with by the lawmen of the world. The character of the star of this movie Jason Statham is a tough guy Frank Martin, who lives quietly on the French coast, delivering customized shipments to various places and never asking questions.

Then one day he notices that a packed shipment is desperately moving. Frank opens the container and sees a bound woman inside. Soon he learns of a kidnapping smuggling ring that is on the rise and he decides to put an end to it once and for all.

Most of the fight scenes in the movie were cut to get a PG-13 rating.

The A-Team

• IMDB Rating – 6.7
• Genre: Action, Thriller, Comedy, Adventure
• Production: USA, UK / 2010
• Budget: $110,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $177,238,796
• Director: Joe Carnahan
• Starring: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley, Quinton Jackson, Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson, Gerald McRaney, Henry Cerny, Yul Vasquez, Brian Bloom

A rather formulaic action movie about money smuggling captures its dynamics and nostalgia and tells about four buddies, war veterans, who escaped from the clutches of Mexican criminals and fled to the United States.

Now they work for the U.S. Army, carrying out complex missions with their dashing team. And then one day they are assigned to take out of Baghdad several tons of dollars along with printing matrices….

The ship at the end of the movie is called Die Vergeltung – “retribution” in German.

American Made

• IMDB Rating – 7.1
• Genre: Action, Drama, Comedy, Crime
• Production: USA, Japan, Colombia / 2017
• Budget: $50,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $134,866,593
• Director: Doug Lyman
• Starring: Tom Cruise, Donal Gleason, Sarah Wright, Jesse Plemons, Caleb Landry Jones, Lola Kirk, Jayma Mays, Alejandro Edda, Benito Martinez, I. Roger Mitchell

Another biopic, created with a lot of humor and great expression, the film with Tom Cruise as the main character Barry Seal.

Seal is a dashing pilot who works for a domestic airline and smuggles Cuban cigars into America. One day he is recruited by the CIA to carry out small secret intelligence missions, and then offered to become a permanent intermediary between the CIA and a major military official in Panama.

After agreeing to this, the clever Sil finds another part-time job along the way – smuggling drugs for Pablo Escobar’s empire. He gets rich, but he can’t stop and finds a new source of risk for big money, not leaving, however, cooperation with the CIA, which gives him a good cover.

The plane on which Tom Cruise (a certified pilot, by the way) filmed all the flight scenes crashed on the last day of filming. Two people died. Tom Cruise was flying the same route by helicopter at that moment.

The Mule

• IMDB Rating – 7.0
• Genre: Thriller, Drama, Crime
• Production: USA, Canada / 2018
• Budget: $50,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $174,804,407
• Director: Clint Eastwood
• Starring: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest, Andy Garcia, Alison Eastwood, Taissa Farmiga, Ignacio Serricio, Lauren Dean

Clint Eastwood’s romantic-philosophical crime drama, in which he played a good-natured old man who transports drugs for the mob to solve his family’s problems.

Earl Stone is in his 80s. He starts transporting cocaine across Illinois at the suggestion of his granddaughter’s girlfriend and soon becomes the most successful “mule” of criminals. Up to a time he does not arouse suspicion of the police, on the proceeds of the painful death of strangers money to improve his business and engaged in a small charity. But one day he deviates from his route to attend the funeral of his ex-wife.

The movie is based on the real-life biography of the Sinaloa Cartel’s most successful and oldest smuggler, Leo Sharp.

Jackie Brown

• IMDB Rating – 7.5
• Genre: Thriller, Drama, Crime
• Production: USA / 1997
• Budget: $12,000,000
• US box office receipts: $39,673,162
• Director: Quentin Tarantino
• Starring: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton, Robert De Niro, Michael Bowen, Chris Tucker, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Tom ‘Tiny’ Lister Jr.

Tarantino’s tough Tarantino world of crime, danger and big money is a movie about a stewardess who dreamed of living the beautiful life. Jackie Brown “moonlights” smuggling drugs and cash from Mexico to the United States for arms dealer Ordell Robbie.

Then one day Ms. Brown is caught by the authorities. Realizing that the girl knows too much, Ordell arranges for her release on bail, and then intends to kill her. But Jackie offers the man a too tempting deal that will draw everyone around him into a bloody adventure.

This movie is an adaptation of the book “rum punch” by American Elmore Leonard.

We’re the Millers

• IMDB Rating – 7.0
• Genre: Comedy, Crime
• Production: USA, UK / 2013
• Budget: $37,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $269,994,119
• Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
• Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Emma Roberts, Will Poulter, Ed Helms, Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, Molly C. Quinn, Tomer Sisle, Matthew Willig.

David is a small-time pot dealer who gets into trouble. He is robbed, and now he owes a considerable sum to his cruel and duplicitous supplier Brad. The only way to settle this misunderstanding is to smuggle a large shipment of drugs across the border for Brad.

Realizing that he needs a good cover, David hires stripper Rose, homeless bully Casey, and rather dumb neighbor Kenny to pose as the Miller family on vacation traveling in a van. David thinks the hardest part will be crossing the border, but that’s nothing compared to the adventures the false Millers get into.

Despite the plot, none of the actors use marijuana.

Dying to Survive

• IMDB Rating – 7.8
• Genre: Drama, Biography
• Production: China / 2018
• Budget: $15,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $451,183,391
• Director: Wen Mue
• Starring: Xu Zheng, Wang Chuanjun, Tang Zho, Zhang Yu, Yang Xinmin, Zhou Yiwei, Wang Yanhui, Wang Jiajia, Gong Beibi, Bharat Bhatia

A wonderful Chinese family drama, based again on real events. Cheng Yong is the owner of a small store where he sells small goods and souvenirs from India. And one day he is asked to bring a rare medicine from India, which is not approved in China.

Thus begins the story of a maritime smuggler who brings forbidden medicines and helps suffering people. Over time, Cheng gets a group of like-minded people to help with the transportation and in search of “clients”, and then the police get involved.

The movie won many Asian awards, and the true story, which happened in 2004, made the Chinese authorities reconsider banning certain medicines.

Maria Full of Grace

• IMDB Rating – 7.4
• Genre: Drama, Crime
• Production: Colombia, Ecuador, USA / 2003
• Budget: $3,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $12,450,821
• Director: Joshua Marston
• Starring: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Virgina Arisa, Yeni Paola Vega, Rodrigo Sanchez Bororquez, Charles Albert Patiño, Wilson Guererro, Joanna Andrea Mora, Fabricio Suarez, Mateo Suarez, Evangelina Morales.

The events of this movie are set against the backdrop of Colombia in the early 2000s, a country where poverty and crime are simply eye-catching. Maria Alvarez, a young pregnant Colombian woman in dire need of money, becomes a transporter of drugs to America.

She carries them in her own stomach, swallowing capsules full of heroin. This method allows her to fly freely between countries and for a long time no one suspects about Maria’s “stuffing”. Will she be able to escape from the clutches of the drug mafia?

Catalina Sandino Moreno, who plays Maria, is the first actress to be nominated for an Oscar for a Spanish-language film. And by the way, this is her movie debut.

Raees

• IMDB Rating – 6.6
• Genre: Action, Drama, Crime
• Production: India / 2017
• US box office receipts: $3,262,954
• Director: Rahul Dholakia

Indian crime thriller with a good rating and unexpectedly impressive ending, telling the story of Rais, who since childhood, which took place in the state of Gujarat in the 60’s, traded in alcohol.

Gradually growing up, Rais becomes a respected bootlegger in the criminal community, smuggling liquor on a larger and larger scale, becoming a trusted confidant of high officials who support his network.

The enterprising Rais not only became rich himself, but also helped the poor people of his homeland. But one day he made an enemy – the incorruptible policeman Majmudar, who set himself the goal of eliminating Rais’s criminal organization.

The script is rumored to be based on the story of Abdul Latif, a notorious criminal from Gujarat. However, despite many coincidences, the makers of the movie deny it.

Contraband

• IMDB Rating – 6.4
• Genre: Action, Thriller, Drama, Crime
• Production: USA, UK, France / 2011
• Budget: $25,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $98,377,839
• Director: Balthasar Kormakur
• Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Caleb Landry Jones, Giovanni Ribisi, J.K. Simmons, Lucas Haas, Lucky Johnson, Diego Luna, Robert Wahlberg

A crime movie with Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale, telling about the urgent smuggling of a huge amount of counterfeit money.

Chris is a former major smuggler, who earned himself a trouble-free old age and “quit” for the sake of his family. But one day his wife’s brother Andy, who works in the same business, lost a large amount of drugs. To save his hapless brother-in-law’s life, Chris undertakes to smuggle some fake millions from Panama to America in the shortest possible time.

The picture made many American lists of the top ten movies of 2012, and it was filmed in Panama and New Orleans. And by the way, it’s a remake of the 2008 Icelandic black comedy Reykjavik-Rotterdam.

Mr. Nice

• IMDB Rating – 6.3
• Genre: Drama, comedy, crime, biography
• Production: UK, Spain / 2010
• Worldwide box office receipts: $45,849
• Director: Bernard Rose
• Starring: Rhys Ivans, Chloë Sevigny, David Thewlis, Luis Tosar, Crispin Glover, Omid Djalili, Christian McKay, Elsa Pataky, Jack Huston, Jamie Harris.

Screen adaptation of the incredible story of Englishman Howard Marks, who in the 70s set up a smuggling network of marijuana and was single-handedly responsible for 10% of the global turnover of illegal “weed”.

And several factors “helped” him in creating his own hashish empire. Howard actively cooperated with the CIA, MI6 secret service and Irish separatists, everywhere managing to become useful. And after his eventual arrest, Marks became an active anti-prohibitionist and writer.

The performer in the lead role, Irish actor Rhys Ivans, befriended the real-life Marx years before the movie was made and promised to play him if such a project came along. Howard Marks himself died in 2016.

The Red Sea Diving Resort

• IMDB Rating – 6.6
• Genre: Thriller, Drama, History
• Production: Canada / 2019
• Director: Gideon Raff
• Starring: Chris Evans, Haley Bennett, Michael Kenneth Williams, Micheal Huisman, Ben Kingsley, Alessandro Nivola, Mbuelo Grootboom, Siso Malangu, Matasa Mbangeni

A spy thriller about the Mossad and people smuggling, which is fine by me. It’s a stylish adaptation of a real-life Israeli covert operation from the 80s.

In Ethiopia, the dictatorial regime of Mengistu Haile Mariama is established, the country begins a fierce famine, and then civil war. Mossad hastily and secretly realizes the idea of one of its agents, Ari Levinson – through a luxury hotel on the coast of Sudan, run by agents, to smuggle Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

This mission at any moment can cost the lives of both the performers and their charges, and therefore the movie has many very disturbing, tense moments.

Neither Chris Evans nor Haley Bennett, who played the Israeli agents, have Jewish roots.

The Drug King

• IMDB Rating – 6.2
• Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama
• Production: Korea South / 2018
• Budget: $13,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $14,446,477
• Director: Woo Min-ho
• Starring: Song Kang-ho, Jo Jong-seok, Bae Doo-na, Lee Sung-min, Yoon Jae-moon, Kim So-jin, Kim Dae-myung, Lee Hee-joon, Jo Woo-jin, Yoo Jae-myung

Netflix’s South Korean biopic about the life of Lee Doo-sam, a notorious drug lord from Busan in Korea in the 70s.

It is set in the port city of Busan in the early 70s. Lee Doo-sam is a simple-minded small-time maritime smuggler, barely making ends meet and grabbing any part-time job to support his wife, two children and their piano teacher.

But one day a dangerous commodity comes his way: drugs. Realizing that it guarantees big money, Lee begins exporting illegal substances to Japan, quickly making an incredible fortune.

For actor Sung Kang-ho, the role of a drug lord is the first villainous portrayal in his career.

The Shepherd

• IMDB Rating – 5.4
• Genre: Action, Thriller, Crime
• Production: USA / 2008
• Budget: $12,000,000
• Director: Isaac Florentine
• Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Stephen Lord, Natalie Robb, Gary MacDonald, Daniel Perron, Scott Adkins, Andre Bernard, Dan Davis, Miles Anderson, Luis Algar.

The Shepherd” is another drug smuggling movie in the spirit of classic action movies, starring an unflappable Jean-Claude Van Damme.

His character is a tough, harsh and crystal honest border guard officer Jack Rabideau, who has incredible training and a well-honed sense of justice, which, as usual, does not prevent him from killing people in packs.

And when former special forces begin to drag heroin across the Mexican border, Rabideau stands in their way and single-handedly destroys all the greedy plans of the villains along with themselves.

Incidentally, Cassie, Rabideau’s daughter, was played by Van Damme’s real-life daughter Bianca Brigitte, and this is her debut.

Crisis

• IMDB Rating – 6.2
• Genre: Thriller, Drama
• Production: Canada, Belgium / 2020
• Worldwide Box Office: $1,099,426
• Director: Nicholas Jarecki
• Starring: Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, Luke Evans, Lily-Rose Depp, Guy Nadon, Veronica Ferres, Kid Cady

Only Soderbergh could take on such a complex project, and he did it! The movie consists of many destinies, tightly intertwined into one whole picture of American-Mexican drug trafficking, where many characters are involved, from small dealers to big politicians.

The main characters, around whom a whole tornado of events unfolds, are only three. This is the new head of the center controlling drug trafficking Robert Wakefield, the wife of a major drug lord Helena Ayala and an honest policeman from Mexico Javier Rodriguez.

The movie has 4 Oscars, 2 BAFTA awards and 2 Golden Globes. The rest of the awards are too long to list. 🙂

The Monuments Men

• IMDB Rating – 6.1
• Genre: Military, Drama, Comedy
• Production: Germany, USA / 2014
• Budget: $70,000,000
• Worldwide Box Office: $155,641,650
• Director: George Clooney
• Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, Cate Blanchett, Dimitri Leonidas, Justus von Dohnanyi

Based on the novel by Robert M. Edsel and graced by Hollywood’s top stars, George Clooney’s movie tells the story of an unusual team of people who banded together during World War II to save works of art from being looted by the Nazis.

The group included restorers, art historians, painters, sculptors and those who had nothing to do with museum rarities but understood the importance of cultural preservation. They sought out German caches of valuable artifacts smuggled out of various countries and then transported them to safe houses.

The original title of the movie Monuments Men is the name of an actual special group of 345 men and women who, during World War II, saved masterpieces from Allied bombing and Nazi looting.

Smuggling Hendrix

• IMDB Rating – 6.6
• Genre: Drama, Comedy
• Production: Cyprus / 2018
• Director: Marius Piperides
• Starring: Adam Bousdux, Fatih Al, Vicky Papadopoulou, Ozgur Karadeniz, Giannis Kokkinos, Valentinos Kokkinos, Tony Demetriou, Marios Stylianou, Andreas Filaktou

A light, bright, refreshing, intellectual comedy from Cypriot director Marius Piperides, mocking the absurdities of the political division of mankind. In 1974, Turkey declared part of Cyprus to be its territory, and the city of Nicosia finds itself divided into two countries.

Yiannis is a failed musician and perpetual child with lots of debts and problems, living on the “Greek” side of Cyprus with his dog Jimmy. He plans to escape to the Netherlands, and when there are only three days left before the trip, Jimmy runs away to the “Turkish” part of town, where Yiannis’ childhood home stands. Now the only way to get the dog back is to smuggle him out.

Jimmy the dog is played by a Cromfordlander named Pepper. And the movie itself won the top prize at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and the Audience Award at Le Arc.

Smugglers

• Genre Crime
• Production: Korea South / 2023
• Budget: $14,000,000
• Director: Ryu Seung-wan
• Starring: Kim Hye-soo, Yeom Jong-ah, Jo In-sung, Park Jong-min, Ko Min-shi, Kim Jong-su, Kim Jae-hwa, Park Kyung-hee, Lee Jin-hee, Lee Do-gun

A bright and fresh South Korean film directed and written by Ryu Seung-wan, set in the peaceful coastal village of Kuncheon in the 1970s.

Many of the women here are haenyeo, divers who collect seafood. But when several industrial seafood factories were built nearby, the village was threatened with poverty. Two friends from the village get involved in a criminal smuggling scheme with unexpected and dangerous consequences.

The movie is set for release on July 26, 2023.