In a way, hostage movies are a form of wish fulfillment. We all want to be the guy who takes down the villain and saves the day. Can you blame us?

And that’s the purpose of this list: to let you know about the best movies that involve some sort of hostage situation that you can witness from the comfort of your living room.

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DE EN ES FR IT PT RU

40 All the Names of God (Todos los nombres de Dios), 2023

A common taxi driver. A police detective fed up with her life. The city center of a dense populated city. A bomb that will explode unless he keeps moving. All while TV cameras from all over the world keep rolling.

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39 Rabid Dogs (Enragés), 2015

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.

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38 The Assault (L’assaut), 2010

Members of a French counterterrorism unit spring into action when four heavily armed Islamic extremists hijack a Paris-bound Air France flight on Christmas Eve 1994.

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37 21 Hours at Munich, 1976

The most famous sporting event in the world is rocked by an act of political violence, and the police are forced to act quickly in order to prevent more carnage. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, militant group Black September murders two Israeli athletes and takes several others hostage in an effort to win the release of Palestinian detainees. As the situation becomes increasingly dangerous, Munich’s police chief tries to end the crisis.

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36 6 Days, 2016

In April 1980, gunmen storm the Iranian Embassy in London. Highly trained SAS operatives prepare a counterattack, hoping to end the hostage situation in one swift blow.

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35 Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, 2014

The inside story of the planning, execution, rousing aftermath, and ultimate downfall of the kidnappers of beer tycoon Alfred “Freddy” Heineken in 1983, which resulted in the largest ransom ever paid for an individual.

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34 Air Force One, 1997

Communist radicals hijack Air Force One with the U.S. President and his family on board. The Vice President negotiates from Washington D.C., while the President, a veteran, fights to rescue the hostages on board.

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33 White House Down, 2013

While on a tour of the White House with his young daughter, a Capitol policeman springs into action to save his child and protect the president from a heavily armed group of paramilitary invaders.

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32 The Point Men (Gyoseop), 2023

A Korean diplomat is dispatched to Afghanistan when a group of South Korean tourists is taken hostage by the Taliban. When all measures fail and one hostage is killed, he is forced to team up with a special agent to rescue the survivors.

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31 Stockholm, 2018

Based on the absurd but true 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis in Stockholm that was documented in the New Yorker as the origins of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

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