Prison movies provide thrilling entertainment from intense drama to family-friendly comedies featuring the desperate attempts of innocent inmates at freedom to endearing anti-heroes. Here is the list of the top 9 prison movies of all time:
Swatantra Veer Savarkar (2024): This biography movie depicts the life of the great Indian freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his imprisonment in the historic infamous Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Jail (2009): Director Madhur Bhandarkar brings Neil Nitin Mukesh, Manoj Bajpayee, and Atul Kulkarni on board, to tell the story of a man as he awaits trials in an overcrowded jail and falls victim to the slow judicial system of the country.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994): An epic story of never surrendering your soul, this beloved movie revolves around an innocent man who was wrongly accused of killing his wife and her lover getting a life imprisonment.
Hunger (2008): Winning 1 BAFTA award, this biography drama movie depicts the life of Irish republican Bobby Sands who leads his inmates in a Northern Irish prison to a hunger strike protesting the day-to-day inhumanization of the prisoners.
Clemency (2019): Nominated for one BAFTA, this movie tells the story of a prison warden in a very chilling and human way as she confronts her psychological and emotional demons while executing inmates as part of her work.
Escape from Alcatraz (1979): A biography thriller movie, based on the world’s most infamous prison, Alcatraz. While the prison was considered impenetrable in its time, 3 inmates successfully escaped from it and were never heard from again.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957): Winning 7 Oscars, this historical war adventure movie follows the British POWs who were forced to build a railway bridge on the river Kwai for their captor Japanese soldiers to attack and destroy occupied Burma.
The Green Mile (1999): Nominated for 4 Oscars, this crime drama fantasy movie, stars Tom Hanks as a death row corrections officer who discovers an inmate with a mysterious power to heal people’s ailments and tries to help the man save from death execution.
Midnight Express (1978): Winning 2 Oscars, this biography crime thriller movie is based on the life of an American student who was caught smuggling drugs out of Turkey and thrown into prison because of this.