Sort by Popularity - Most Popular Movies and TV Shows tagged with keyword "prison-drama"
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1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
R | 142 min | Drama
Over the course of several years, two convicts form a friendship, seeking consolation and, eventually, redemption through basic compassion.
Director: Frank Darabont | Stars: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, William Sadler
Votes: 2,889,993 | Gross: $28.34M
2. Prison Break (2005–2017)
TV-14 | 44 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A structural engineer installs himself in a prison he helped design, in order to save his falsely accused brother from a death sentence by breaking themselves out from the inside.
Stars: Dominic Purcell, Wentworth Miller, Amaury Nolasco, Robert Knepper
Votes: 579,629
3. Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019)
TV-MA | 59 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
Convicted of a decade-old crime of transporting drug money, ordinarily law-abiding Piper Chapman is sentenced to 18 months behind bars and quickly discovers the realities of life-changing prison time.
Stars: Taylor Schilling, Danielle Brooks, Taryn Manning, Emma Myles
Votes: 320,249
4. The Green Mile (1999)
R | 189 min | Crime, Drama, Fantasy
A tale set on death row, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the lead guard, Paul Edgecombe, recognizes John's gift, he tries to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
Director: Frank Darabont | Stars: Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt
Votes: 1,408,000 | Gross: $136.80M
5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
R | 133 min | Drama
In the Fall of 1963, a Korean War veteran and criminal pleads insanity and is admitted to a mental institution, where he rallies up the scared patients against the tyrannical nurse.
Director: Milos Forman | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Michael Berryman, Peter Brocco
Votes: 1,072,705 | Gross: $112.00M
6. American History X (1998)
R | 119 min | Crime, Drama
Living a life marked by violence, neo-Nazi Derek finally goes to prison after killing two black youths. Upon his release, Derek vows to change; he hopes to prevent his brother, Danny, who idolizes Derek, from following in his footsteps.
Director: Tony Kaye | Stars: Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Beverly D'Angelo, Jennifer Lien
Votes: 1,186,630 | Gross: $6.72M
7. Oz (1997–2003)
TV-MA | 55 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A series chronicling the daily activities of an unusual prison facility and its criminal inhabitants.
Stars: Ernie Hudson, J.K. Simmons, Lee Tergesen, Dean Winters
Votes: 106,713
8. Shot Caller (2017)
R | 121 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A newly released prisoner is forced by the leaders of his gang to orchestrate a major crime with a brutal rival gang on the streets of Southern California.
Director: Ric Roman Waugh | Stars: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Omari Hardwick, Lake Bell, Jon Bernthal
Votes: 98,629
9. Black Bird (2022)
TV-MA | 58 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
Jimmy Keene is sentenced to 10 years in a minimum security prison but he cuts a deal with the FBI to befriend a suspected serial killer. Keene has to elicit a confession from Larry Hall to find the bodies of as many as eighteen women.
Stars: Taron Egerton, Paul Walter Hauser, Greg Kinnear, Ray Liotta
Votes: 104,121
10. The Night Of (2016)
TV-MA | 66 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
After a night of partying with a woman he picked up, a man wakes up to find her stabbed to death and is charged with her murder.
Stars: Riz Ahmed, John Turturro, Bill Camp, Amara Karan
Votes: 171,854
11. The Platform (2019)
TV-MA | 94 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A vertical prison with one cell per level. Two people per cell. Only one food platform and two minutes per day to feed. An endless nightmare trapped in The Hole.
Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia | Stars: Ivan Massagué, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan, Emilio Buale
Votes: 272,716
12. The Great Escape (1963)
Approved | 172 min | Adventure, Drama, Thriller
Allied prisoners of war plan for several hundred of their number to escape from a German camp during World War II.
Director: John Sturges | Stars: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson
Votes: 258,995 | Gross: $12.10M
13. Time (2021– )
TV-14 | 59 min | Crime, Drama
Eric is a prison officer who tries to protect those in his charge. When one of the most dangerous inmates identifies his weakness, Eric faces an impossible choice between his principles and his love for his family.
Stars: Siobhan Finneran, Sean Bean, Jodie Whittaker, Stephen Graham
Votes: 27,261
14. Wentworth (2013–2021)
TV-MA | 45 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
The confronting look into the lives of the inmates and prison staff of Wentworth Correctional Centre as they navigate the ups and downs of their lives in the prison system.
Stars: Kate Atkinson, Katrina Milosevic, Robbie Magasiva, Jacquie Brennan
Votes: 24,623
15. Unbroken (I) (2014)
PG-13 | 137 min | Action, Biography, Drama
After a near-fatal plane crash in WWII, Olympian Louis Zamperini spends a harrowing 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmen before he's caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
Director: Angelina Jolie | Stars: Jack O'Connell, Miyavi, Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund
Votes: 182,776 | Gross: $115.64M
16. Sleepers (1996)
R | 147 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
After a prank goes disastrously wrong, a group of boys are sent to a detention center where they are brutalized. Thirteen years later, an unexpected random encounter with a former guard gives them a chance for revenge.
Director: Barry Levinson | Stars: Robert De Niro, Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt, Jason Patric
Votes: 237,619 | Gross: $49.10M
17. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
GP | 127 min | Crime, Drama
A laid-back Southern man is sentenced to two years in a rural prison, but refuses to conform.
Director: Stuart Rosenberg | Stars: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D. Cannon
Votes: 188,586 | Gross: $16.22M
18. Papillon (1973)
R | 151 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
A French convict in the 1930s befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence in the South American penal colony on Devil's Island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner | Stars: Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, Victor Jory, Don Gordon
Votes: 138,414 | Gross: $53.27M
19. Inside Man (II) (2022)
TV-MA | 240 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
A prisoner on death row in the US and a woman trapped in a cellar under an English vicarage, cross paths in the most unexpected way.
Stars: David Tennant, Stanley Tucci, Dolly Wells, Lydia West
Votes: 36,411
20. Midnight Express (1978)
R | 121 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
Billy Hayes, an American college student, is caught smuggling drugs out of Turkey and thrown into prison.
Director: Alan Parker | Stars: Brad Davis, Irene Miracle, Bo Hopkins, Paolo Bonacelli
Votes: 88,265 | Gross: $35.00M
21. In the Name of the Father (1993)
R | 133 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
An Irish man's coerced confession to an I.R.A. bombing he did not commit results in the imprisonment of his father as well. Meanwhile, a British lawyer fights to clear their names and free them.
Director: Jim Sheridan | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Pete Postlethwaite, Alison Crosbie, Philip King
Votes: 187,164 | Gross: $25.01M
22. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)
Not Rated | 132 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A former boxer-turned-drug runner lands in a prison battleground after a deal gets deadly.
Director: S. Craig Zahler | Stars: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Don Johnson, Udo Kier
Votes: 75,725
23. Chicken Run (2000)
G | 84 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy
When a cockerel apparently flies into a chicken farm, the chickens see him as an opportunity to escape their evil owners.
Directors: Peter Lord, Nick Park | Stars: Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, Phil Daniels, Lynn Ferguson
Votes: 212,305 | Gross: $106.83M
24. Bronson (2008)
R | 92 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A young man who was sentenced to seven years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending three decades in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter-ego, Charles Bronson.
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn | Stars: Tom Hardy, Kelly Adams, Luing Andrews, Katy Barker
Votes: 140,924 | Gross: $0.10M
25. Breaker Morant (1980)
PG | 107 min | Drama, History, War
Three Australian lieutenants are court martialed for executing prisoners as a way of deflecting attention from war crimes committed by their superior officers.
Director: Bruce Beresford | Stars: Edward Woodward, Jack Thompson, John Waters, Bryan Brown
Votes: 14,439 | Gross: $7.14M
26. Escape Plan (2013)
R | 115 min | Action, Thriller
When a structural-security authority finds himself set up and incarcerated in the world's most secret and secure prison, he has to use his skills to escape with help from the inside.
Director: Mikael Håfström | Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, 50 Cent, Vincent D'Onofrio
Votes: 257,519 | Gross: $25.13M
27. Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
PG | 112 min | Action, Biography, Crime
Alcatraz is the most secure prison of its time. It is believed that no one can ever escape from it, until three daring men make a possibly successful attempt at escaping from one of the most infamous prisons in the world.
Director: Don Siegel | Stars: Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Roberts Blossom, Jack Thibeau
Votes: 147,483 | Gross: $43.00M
28. The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)
R | 122 min | Biography, Drama, History
In 1971, twenty-four male students are selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.
Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez | Stars: Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan, Billy Crudup, Olivia Thirlby
Votes: 46,137 | Gross: $0.64M
29. Escape at Dannemora (2018)
TV-MA | 63 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
A female prison employee in upstate New York becomes romantically involved with a pair of inmates and helps them escape.
Stars: Benicio Del Toro, Patricia Arquette, Paul Dano, Bonnie Hunt
Votes: 28,052
30. Escape from Pretoria (2020)
PG-13 | 106 min | Biography, Crime, Mystery
Based on the real-life prison break of two political captives, Escape From Pretoria is a race-against-time thriller set in the tumultuous apartheid days of South Africa.
Director: Francis Annan | Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Webber, Ian Hart, Mark Leonard Winter
Votes: 43,586
31. The Professor and the Madman (2019)
Not Rated | 124 min | Biography, Drama, History
Professor James Murray begins work compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dr. William Minor.
Director: Farhad Safinia | Stars: Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, Eddie Marsan, Natalie Dormer
Votes: 51,066
32. Waiting for the Barbarians (2019)
112 min | Drama, History
At an isolated frontier outpost, a colonial magistrate suffers a crisis of conscience when an army colonel arrives looking to interrogate the locals about an impending uprising, using cruel tactics that horrify the magistrate.
Director: Ciro Guerra | Stars: Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Gana Bayarsaikhan
Votes: 14,670
33. The Informer (2019)
R | 113 min | Action, Crime, Drama
An ex-convict working undercover intentionally gets himself incarcerated again in order to infiltrate the mob at a maximum security prison.
Director: Andrea Di Stefano | Stars: Joel Kinnaman, Rosamund Pike, Common, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz
Votes: 42,104
34. The Longest Yard (1974)
R | 121 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A sadistic warden asks a former pro quarterback, now serving time in his prison, to put together a team of inmates to take on (and get pummeled by) the guards.
Director: Robert Aldrich | Stars: Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, Ed Lauter, Michael Conrad
Votes: 21,433 | Gross: $7.13M
35. Hunger (2008)
Not Rated | 96 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
Irish republican Bobby Sands leads the inmates of a Northern Irish prison in a hunger strike.
Director: Steve McQueen | Stars: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, Laine Megaw
Votes: 73,569 | Gross: $0.15M
36. Starred Up (2013)
Not Rated | 106 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
Eric Love, 19, is locked up in prison. On his first day, he assaults another inmate and several guards. He's offered group therapy and his dad, an inmate as well, tries to talk sense into him. Can he be rehabilitated?
Director: David Mackenzie | Stars: Jack O'Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend, Sam Spruell
Votes: 48,698 | Gross: $0.03M
37. Breakout Kings (2011–2012)
TV-14 | 43 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A squad of U.S. marshals team up with cons (former fugitives) to work together on tracking down prison escapees in exchange for getting time off their sentences.
Stars: Domenick Lombardozzi, Brooke Nevin, Malcolm Goodwin, Jimmi Simpson
Votes: 16,427
38. A Prayer Before Dawn (2017)
R | 116 min | Action, Biography, Crime
The true story of an English boxer incarcerated in one of Thailand's most notorious prisons as he fights in Muay Thai tournaments to earn his freedom.
Director: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire | Stars: Joe Cole, Vithaya Pansringarm, Cherry Miko, Panya Yimmumphai
Votes: 26,202
39. The Last Castle (2001)
R | 131 min | Action, Drama, Thriller
A court-martialed General rallies together twelve hundred inmates to rise against a corrupt and sadistic warden.
Director: Rod Lurie | Stars: Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Steve Burton
Votes: 85,314 | Gross: $18.21M
40. Felon (2008)
R | 104 min | Crime, Thriller
Locked up for killing an intruder in self-defense, a family man must cope with life in the violent penal system.
Director: Ric Roman Waugh | Stars: Stephen Dorff, Marisol Nichols, Vincent Miller, Anne Archer
Votes: 83,573 | Gross: $0.04M
41. Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
Approved | 107 min | Drama, Western
A fiercely independent cowboy gets himself locked up in prison to escape with an old friend.
Director: David Miller | Stars: Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, Michael Kane
Votes: 9,962
42. A Prophet (2009)
R | 155 min | Crime, Drama
A delinquent Muslim man struggles to get by in prison until he is taken under the wing of a powerful mob boss. But his gradual rise through the mob's ranks brings him in conflict with his mentor.
Director: Jacques Audiard | Stars: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif, Reda Kateb
Votes: 102,197 | Gross: $2.08M
43. Corrective Measures (2022)
TV-MA | 106 min | Action, Sci-Fi
In the world's most dangerous maximum security prison filled with supervillain inmates and corrupt staff, tensions rise leading to anarchy and destruction.
Director: Sean Patrick O'Reilly | Stars: Michael Rooker, Tom Cavanagh, Brennan Mejia, Kevin Zegers
Votes: 4,384
44. Lock Up (1989)
R | 109 min | Action, Crime, Drama
With only six months left of his sentence, inmate Frank Leone is transferred from a minimum security prison to a maximum security prison by a vindictive warden.
Director: John Flynn | Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Donald Sutherland, John Amos, Sonny Landham
Votes: 46,448 | Gross: $22.10M
45. Carandiru (2003)
R | 145 min | Crime, Drama
Stories of crime, revenge, love, and friendship at the Carandiru Penitentiary, the largest prison in Latin America.
Director: Hector Babenco | Stars: Enrique Diaz, Wagner Moura, Caio Blat, Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos
Votes: 21,943 | Gross: $0.21M
46. Reform School Girls (1986)
R | 94 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A new group of girls arrives at Pridemore Juvenile Facility, where the brutal warden plays favoritism with a few, and treats the rest like animals. But one girl is not taking this horrible treatment lying down.
Director: Tom DeSimone | Stars: Linda Carol, Wendy O. Williams, Pat Ast, Sybil Danning
Votes: 2,988 | Gross: $2.51M
47. Hart's War (2002)
R | 125 min | Drama, War
A law student becomes a lieutenant during World War II, is captured and asked to defend a black prisoner of war falsely accused of murder.
Director: Gregory Hoblit | Stars: Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard, Cole Hauser
Votes: 55,342 | Gross: $19.08M
48. The Experiment (2010)
R | 96 min | Drama, Thriller
26 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.
Director: Paul T. Scheuring | Stars: Adrien Brody, Cam Gigandet, Forest Whitaker, Maggie Grace
Votes: 57,183
49. The Survivor (2021)
R | 129 min | Biography, Drama, History
After World War II, Harry Haft is a boxer who fought against his peers in concentration camps. Haunted by memories, he tries to use fighting legends as a way to find his love.
Director: Barry Levinson | Stars: Ben Foster, Billy Magnussen, Vicky Krieps, Peter Sarsgaard
Votes: 6,122
50. Son of Saul (2015)
R | 107 min | Drama, War
A Jewish-Hungarian concentration camp prisoner sets out to give a child he mistook for his son a proper burial.
Director: László Nemes | Stars: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn, Todd Charmont
Votes: 51,967 | Gross: $1.78M