There’s something especially nasty about Facing El Chapo. It doesn’t need a giant army of cartel soldiers or a sprawling crime saga to make you nervous. The movie takes two federal officers, puts them in an already bad situation, and then drops the worst possible name into their night: Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
That’s the hook, but the real strength of the film is the pressure. A routine traffic stop turns into a nightmare. The officers know exactly who they have in front of them, yet capturing the most wanted man in Mexico doesn’t suddenly make them powerful. Quite the opposite. It makes them targets.
That grounded approach is probably why Facing El Chapo feels different from the usual cartel blockbuster. It’s less interested in making criminals look cool and more interested in showing what happens when ordinary law enforcement officers suddenly find themselves standing in the middle of something far bigger than they can control.
If you finished the 2026 Netflix thriller and immediately thought, “Okay, what the hell do I watch now?”, I’ve got you covered.
These are the crime movies and series I’d put at the top of the list.
1. Sicario (2015)
If Facing El Chapo had you sitting forward in your chair, Sicario is the obvious next stop.
Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 thriller is one of those movies where the tension almost feels physical. Emily Blunt plays FBI agent Kate Macer, who is pulled into a shadowy government operation targeting a powerful Mexican cartel. The deeper she gets involved, the less certain she becomes about who is actually in control.
And that’s what makes Sicario such a great companion to Facing El Chapo.
Neither movie treats the drug war like a simple cops versus criminals story. There are rules, but they’re constantly being bent. There are people who claim to be protecting the public while doing things that are almost impossible to justify.
Benicio del Toro is terrifyingly good as Alejandro, while Josh Brolin brings a completely different kind of menace as Matt Graver. Then you have Roger Deakins behind the camera, turning deserts, tunnels, highways and border crossings into places that somehow feel dangerous even when nothing is happening.
That famous border sequence alone is worth watching the movie for.
My take: If you only watch one movie from this list, make it Sicario.
2. End of Watch (2012)
This is probably the closest recommendation if what grabbed you about Facing El Chapo was the relationship between the two officers.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña play Los Angeles police partners Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala. Their friendship is the heart of the movie. They joke around, argue, annoy each other and gradually become the kind of partners who genuinely trust one another with their lives.
Then things go very wrong.
Their work brings them into contact with members of a Mexican drug cartel, and what initially looks like another dangerous day on patrol slowly turns into something much more personal.
David Ayer shoots much of the movie with handheld cameras and character-recorded footage. Sometimes it looks rough. That’s intentional. You get the feeling that you’re riding along in the patrol car rather than watching a polished Hollywood cop movie.
That makes the violence hit harder.
There’s also a surprisingly emotional core underneath all the brutality. You care about these two guys before the movie starts putting them in increasingly awful situations.
Why it works after Facing El Chapo: ordinary cops, cartel violence, brotherhood, escalating danger and the feeling that one bad decision can completely destroy a normal shift.
3. 16 Blocks (2006)
Bruce Willis was still doing some seriously good work in 16 Blocks, and this movie remains an underrated little crime thriller.
Willis plays Jack Mosley, a burned-out New York detective who gets assigned a task that sounds almost laughably easy: escort a witness 16 blocks to a courthouse.
Naturally, it isn’t easy.
The witness, played by Mos Def, knows something that could expose corrupt police officers. Suddenly Jack isn’t simply protecting a man. He’s protecting him from people wearing the same badge he does.
That setup makes 16 Blocks an interesting match for Facing El Chapo. Both stories take a seemingly straightforward law-enforcement assignment and gradually reveal that the protagonists are trapped in something much bigger.
There’s no superhero nonsense here. Jack is tired, damaged and outnumbered. The movie keeps pushing him from one bad situation into another.
It’s tense without trying too hard to look impressive.
And honestly, that’s refreshing.
4. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Want something more stripped-down and brutal?
Go straight to John Carpenter.
Assault on Precinct 13 takes a wonderfully simple premise and squeezes almost everything possible out of it. A group of police officers and prisoners become trapped inside an isolated police station while an armed gang gathers outside.
Help isn’t coming quickly.
The ammunition is limited.
And the people inside don’t exactly trust each other.
Sound familiar?
The connection with Facing El Chapo is less about cartels specifically and more about being trapped while danger keeps getting closer. Once the protagonists realize they can’t simply call for backup and go home, the entire movie becomes a survival exercise.
The 2005 remake, starring Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne, is also worth a watch if you prefer something more modern and action-heavy.
Personally, I’d start with Carpenter’s original. It has a rawness that modern thrillers often polish away.
5. Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite, 2007)
This one goes much harder into militarized policing.
José Padilha’s Elite Squad follows Brazil’s BOPE special police unit as it operates in Rio de Janeiro’s violent favelas. The movie isn’t particularly interested in making anyone comfortable. Corruption is everywhere, drug organizations are heavily armed, and the police response is often just as brutal.
What I like about Elite Squad is that it doesn’t pretend there’s an easy answer.
The characters are operating inside a system that is already broken. Some officers are corrupt. Others are exhausted. Some believe extreme violence is the only language criminals understand.
That makes the film feel less like a conventional action movie and more like a pressure cooker.
If Facing El Chapo made you curious about what organized crime does to the people trying to fight it, this is one of the best places to go next.
6. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
The sequel to Sicario isn’t as subtle as the original. Honestly, that’s part of the appeal.
Day of the Soldado brings back Benicio del Toro as Alejandro and Josh Brolin as Matt Graver, but the story is even more ruthless. The characters are thrown into a dirty geopolitical game involving rival cartels, human trafficking and an operation that quickly spirals out of control.
This is the pick for viewers who liked the tactical side of Facing El Chapo.
There are more weapons, more operations and considerably more chaos. The movie feels colder than the original, with very little interest in offering moral comfort.
Alejandro remains the standout for me. Del Toro plays him with this strange combination of restraint and barely contained rage. You never quite know what he’s going to do next.
If Sicario is the slow-burning nightmare, Day of the Soldado is the nightmare after someone kicked the door down.
7. Traffic (2000)
Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic is a completely different beast.
Instead of following one arrest or one police operation, the movie spreads its story across multiple characters and countries. American politicians, law enforcement officers, addicts, cartel figures and families all become pieces of the same enormous drug-war machine.
Benicio del Toro gives one of the film’s best performances as Mexican police officer Javier Rodriguez, a character forced to navigate corruption while trying to hold onto some sense of decency.
That perspective is important.
Facing El Chapo gives you the immediate danger of one encounter. Traffic shows you what surrounds that encounter: money, politics, addiction, corruption and people whose lives are connected without ever meeting.
It’s slower, more complicated and far less interested in shootouts.
But if you want the bigger picture, it’s hard to beat.
8. The Day I Met El Chapo (2017)
Now for something different.
If you want the real El Chapo rather than a fictionalized version, watch Netflix’s three-part documentary The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate del Castillo Story.
The series revolves around Mexican actress Kate del Castillo and actor Sean Penn, who became involved in the extraordinary attempt to meet and interview Guzmán while he was a fugitive.
The story sounds like something a screenwriter would get rejected for being too unbelievable.
Yet it happened.
What makes the documentary particularly interesting is the access. Instead of another dramatized crime story, you get interviews, footage and firsthand accounts surrounding one of the strangest celebrity-criminal encounters in recent history.
It also gives you a better sense of the mythology surrounding El Chapo. He wasn’t simply a cartel boss hiding from police. His name had become a cultural phenomenon, which makes the premise of Facing El Chapo even more fascinating.
9. Narcos: Mexico
If you want to spend considerably more time inside the world that produced El Chapo, Narcos: Mexico is the obvious binge.
The three-season series traces the development of Mexico’s modern drug trade, beginning with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and the Guadalajara Cartel.
What makes the show particularly useful after Facing El Chapo is the historical context. You see how fragmented criminal organizations gradually become more organized, how trafficking routes develop, and how corruption can spread through institutions that are supposed to stop the trade.
And yes, El Chapo himself appears in the story.
The series gives you a much broader understanding of the environment surrounding figures like Guzmán. It isn’t a direct prequel to Facing El Chapo, but watching it afterward adds plenty of context.
The best part? The show understands that cartel history isn’t just about famous kingpins. There are politicians, cops, informants, journalists, families and countless people caught underneath the machinery.
10. El Chapo (Series)
Finally, if what you really want is the El Chapo story, this is the one.
El Chapo follows Joaquín Guzmán across decades, from his early involvement with the Guadalajara Cartel through his rise within the Sinaloa Cartel, prison escapes and eventual capture.
Marco de la O plays Guzmán, and the series gives viewers considerably more time to explore the man behind the headlines than a 91-minute thriller possibly could.
It’s also the most direct recommendation here if Facing El Chapo left you wanting to know what happened before and after the events depicted in the film.
The show takes plenty of dramatic liberties, so I wouldn’t treat every scene as a documentary record. But as a crime drama about Guzmán’s rise and eventual downfall, it’s an easy recommendation for anyone fascinated by the subject.
Which One Should You Watch First?
| If you liked… | Watch this |
|---|---|
| The tense cartel atmosphere | Sicario |
| The two-officer dynamic | End of Watch |
| The survival/escort structure | 16 Blocks |
| The siege tension | Assault on Precinct 13 |
| Militarized police operations | Elite Squad |
| Tactical cartel action | Sicario: Day of the Soldado |
| The bigger drug-war picture | Traffic |
| The real El Chapo story | The Day I Met El Chapo |
| Mexican cartel history | Narcos: Mexico |
| Guzmán’s full dramatic biography | El Chapo |
My Personal Ranking
If I were putting together a weekend marathon after Facing El Chapo, I’d go with:
- Sicario — still the king of modern cartel thrillers.
- End of Watch — the closest match emotionally.
- Narcos: Mexico — best for the larger historical picture.
- Sicario: Day of the Soldado — nastier and more action-focused.
- Traffic — slower, smarter and much broader.
- Elite Squad — brutal police drama with serious bite.
- 16 Blocks — underrated survival thriller.
- The Day I Met El Chapo — essential if you want reality.
- Assault on Precinct 13 — old-school siege perfection.
- El Chapo — the long-form Guzmán binge.
What I like most about this group is that none of these movies needs to make the cartel world look glamorous to keep you watching. The danger comes from uncertainty. A routine patrol can become a death sentence. A prisoner can have more power outside the cell than inside it. A police badge doesn’t necessarily protect the person wearing it.
That’s also why Facing El Chapo works as well as it does. The most frightening part isn’t simply that these officers have captured El Chapo. It’s that they understand what capturing him means.
And once you understand that, Sicario, End of Watch, Narcos: Mexico and the rest of this list suddenly feel like very natural next watches.
