10 Movies To Watch While Waiting for ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’
Jeremy has more than 2800 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas.
Sign in to your Collider account
So long as there’s no unforeseen disaster that occurs at some point within the next few weeks, Grand Theft Auto VI should finally come out, and at the time of writing, it’s about a month away. A new Grand Theft Auto game is always a big deal, especially since Grand Theft Auto IV was a full-on gaming blockbuster in 2008, and then 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V was even bigger, and it impressively came out within the same console generation as IV.
So, the next generation would get a sixth Grand Theft Auto, right? Nope! The next generation got a remastered Grand Theft Auto V, with Grand Theft Auto Online making so much money that the sixth didn’t “have” to come out fast or anything. The wait has been 13 years now between games, but Grand Theft Auto VI is already a massive deal, and it will probably be the entertainment release of the year, which is impressive considering some of the blockbusters and acclaimed movies that have come out in 2026. Speaking of movies, these ones might well be good homework to watch before GTA 6, if you want a little indication of what the game might be like, or they're good to watch if you need something to fill the time while you anxiously await being able to play this long-awaited game (and especially if you’ve already played GTA 5 to death).
10 'Bonnie and Clyde' (1967)
The main way Grand Theft Auto VI is standing out narratively, compared to past games, is by having the two main characters be in a relationship as well as being partners in crime. It’s not the first GTA to let you play as more than one character, since GTA 5 had a trio of protagonists, but that personal connection between the two should make both gameplay and the narrative interesting for hopefully obvious reasons.
Bonnie and Clyde is a movie that has been brought up when discussing the narrative of GTA 6, as an influence, and it is pretty much the definitive movie about two people in love doing a bunch of crimes together. Maybe Badlands as well, but that’s a bit more of an arthouse thing, and also, Bonnie and Clyde is more focused on robberies and stuff, with the marketing and gameplay seen for GTA 6 so far emphasizing that kind of crime.
9 '2 Fast 2 Furious' (2003)
From a romance to a bromance, 2 Fast 2 Furious went campier than the first movie, but not to quite the extent as some of the future entries in the Fast and Furious series. The title does let you know you're in for silliness, and the bromance angle comes about because Brian (returning from the first movie) and the newly introduced Roman do have some remarkable chemistry, and the pair get involved in a pretty wild series of events here.
The real reason 2 Fast 2 Furious is worth a shout-out here, though, is because it’s set in Miami, and that’s where GTA 6 is kinda/sorta set… at least the Grand Theft Auto world’s version of Miami.
Sure, it’s not actually romantic, at least between the two, but it’s close. The real reason 2 Fast 2 Furious is worth a shout-out here, though, is because it’s set in Miami, and that’s where GTA 6 is kinda/sorta set… at least the Grand Theft Auto world’s version of Miami, which is called Vice City. Or technically, GTA 6 is set in a larger area than just Vice City: the state of Leonida, which is GTA’s Florida.
8 'Bad Boys II' (2003)
2003 was a good year for over-the-top action/crime movies set in Miami, apparently, because Bad Boys II can be described that way, so it’s a very fitting double feature with 2 Fast 2 Furious. Miami is important to all four Bad Boys movies, sure, but Bad Boys II is probably the best of the bunch, and it’s also the wildest, which helps if you want a film that scratches the GTA itch.
There’s a ton of chaos, destruction, violence, and debauchery here, and while it’s not known exactly how wild Grand Theft Auto VI will be, it’ll probably feel at least a little zany in parts (and it’s unlikely to be as gritty and downbeat as Grand Theft Auto IV). The main characters of Bad Boys II sometimes act like they're the playable characters in a GTA or GTA-type game, and the version of Miami depicted here is also heightened in a way that'll likely be similar to Vice City being a more extravagant version of Miami in GTA 6.
7 'Drive' (2011)
Now for something a good deal more reserved, Drive is a crime film, and maybe a thriller as well, but it’s a stretch to call it a true action movie because the action is relatively infrequent. It’s still engaging, and there’s a good deal of violence without there necessarily being tons of fight or chase scenes, so the stakes are there for sure, and most of the characters are sufficiently shady and/or morally complex.
It’s also a cool movie, and GTA 6 looks like it’s trying to earn some serious points for style. Driving is important to Drive, of course, and then you always spend a ton of time driving in any GTA game, too. Further, Drive has something of a love story told at the same time as all the stuff about heists and double-crosses, so therein lies one more potential point of comparison between it and the upcoming sixth Grand Theft Auto game.
6 'Miami Vice' (2006)
Another probably obvious one, Miami Vice takes place in, well, you know. And it’s an update of the TV show of the same name, which was all about Miami and crime in the 1980s, while Miami Vice (2006) is of its time, and that does make it worth comparing to the GTA series, because Grand Theft Auto: Vice City introduced the titular city, back in 2002, but it was set during the 1980s.
Grand Theft Auto VI will update things and also be more expansive, taking place in the 2020s and having more to explore than just Vice City. So, Grand Theft Auto VI might well be more Miami Vice (2006) than Miami Vice (the TV series), while Grand Theft Auto: Vice City definitely had that undeniable ‘80s flavor to it, while also heavily referencing another ‘80s crime-related property… but more on that shortly.
5 'Heat' (1995)
Like Miami Vice (2006), Heat was directed by Michael Mann, and he’s a filmmaker who’s always understood how to best operate within the heist genre specifically, and maybe the crime and action genres more broadly. Heat is his masterpiece in that regard, being about a skilled bank robber and a determined detective clashing and having a whole game of cat-and-mouse with each other while the former plans an ambitious bank robbery.
Truth be told, Grand Theft Auto V was the game that had the most by way of Heat references, since that game took place in and around the series’ version of Los Angeles, and Heat is very much a movie all about L.A. But Grand Theft Auto IV wasn’t, and had some big heist-type missions that took at least a little influence from Heat, so even with GTA 6 moving away from Los Santos, some Heat-ish things might well sneak their way in regardless, especially if there are any grand heist-focused missions in the game.
4 'The Godfather Part II' (1974)
There’s a connection to Heat here, because The Godfather Part II, like that film, also stars both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. They don’t share scenes here, though, because De Niro plays the younger version of Marlon Brando’s character in flashbacks, while in the film’s present, so to speak, Pacino’s Michael Corleone is now in charge of his family’s criminal empire, and running into some, uh, complications, to put it mildly.
Part of his attempts to legitimize the family business involves expanding beyond New York, and that involves some time spent in both Miami and Cuba, which gives parts of The Godfather Part II a different flavor. Miami isn't as central a location as it was in, say, Miami Vice or Bad Boys II, but come on… any opportunity to rewatch something as great as The Godfather Part II is worth seizing.
3 'Key Largo' (1948)
Jumping back even further in time now than 1974’s The Godfather Part II, Key Largo is nearly 80 years old, and so it feels like it’s one of the earlier crime movies out there to make use of Florida as a central location. Key Largo, Florida is indeed a real place, though you don’t get a ton of outdoor scenery in Key Largo, because the premise here involves a hurricane passing through, trapping a good many characters inside a hotel.
This involves a whole hostage situation, too, and Key Largo works as a pretty impressively suspenseful movie for its time, and then it naturally benefits from having both Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall at its center (oh, and the supporting cast shouldn't be overlooked either, considering Edward G. Robinson is also in this).
2 'The Wolf of Wall Street' (2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street is both quite a lot of fun and fairly despairing, if you stop to think about it. Martin Scorsese is no stranger to making cynical and hopeless-feeling movies, and The Wolf of Wall Street takes a while to reveal itself as such. It’s fun and wild until it’s not, and then the knife gets twisted in a different sort of way by the end, with less of a karmic punishment for the central characters compared to a good many crime movies.
It’s kind of realistic in that way, and also very thought-provoking as to what it says about human nature and who people choose to idolize, even if they don’t realize they're doing that. The chaos here is the kind of thing that you can find in a GTA game if you seek it out… people behaving badly, partying, drugs, sex, not really caring about the other people around you. You don’t really have to squint to see it.
1 'Scarface' (1983)
Saving the most obvious pick for last, Scarface was that previously alluded-to film that has a great deal in common with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. You could tell the people who made that game were big fans of the film, and locations that were made iconic in Scarface were either replicated or referenced in that particular Grand Theft Auto game, and both took place in the 1980s, of course.
Since GTA 6 is set in modern times, the references to Scarface probably won’t be as common or in-your-face, but it would also be surprising if there were none at all. Scarface is like the definite crime movie set in Miami, and so any crime-heavy video game that takes place in Miami (or an area that replicates Miami and Florida) is pretty much obligated to tip its hat to Brian De Palma’s gangster epic in one way or another.
Scarface
- Release Date
- December 9, 1983
- Runtime
- 170 minutes
- Director
- Brian De Palma
- Writers
- Oliver Stone
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.