Classic prison movie recommendations
# Rescue Dawn
Year: 2006 | Country: Luxembourg, United States of America
Director:
Cast:
Synopsis
A US Fighter pilot's epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.
# Escape Plan
Year: 2013 | Country: United States of America
Director: Mikael Håfström
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, Vinnie Jones, 50 Cent
Synopsis
Ray Breslin is the world's foremost authority on structural security. After analyzing every high security prison and learning a vast array of survival skills so he can design escape-proof prisons, his
# Con Air
Year: 1997 | Country: US
Director: Simon West
Cast: Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, Mykelti Williamson
Synopsis
Newly-paroled former US Army ranger Cameron Poe is headed back to his wife, but must fly home aboard a prison transport flight dubbed "Jailbird" taking the “worst of the worst” prisoners, a group described as “pure predators”, to a new super-prison. Poe faces impossible odds when the transport plane is skyjacked mid-flight by the most vicious criminals in the country led by the mastermind — genius serial killer Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom, and backed by black militant Diamond Dog and psychopath Billy Bedlam.
# Escape from Alcatraz
Year: 1979 | Country: US
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Roberts Blossom, Jack Thibeau, Fred Ward
Synopsis
San Francisco Bay, January 18, 1960. Frank Lee Morris is transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison located on a rocky island. Although no one has ever managed to escape from there, Frank and other inmates begin to carefully prepare an escape plan.
# One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Year: 1975 | Country: US
Director: Miloš Forman
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Brad Dourif, Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito, William Redfield
Synopsis
A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.
# Papillon
Year: 2017 | Country: CZ
Director: Michael Noer
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Rami Malek, Christopher Fairbank, Eve Hewson, Michael Socha
Synopsis
Henri “Papillon” Charrière, a safecracker from the Parisian underworld, is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, where he forges a strong friendship with Louis Dega, a counterfeiter who needs his protection.
# Law Abiding Citizen
Year: 2009 | Country: GB
Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb
Synopsis
A frustrated man decides to take justice into his own hands after a plea bargain sets one of his family's killers free. He targets not only the killer but also the district attorney and others involved in the deal.
# The Great Escape
Year: 1963 | Country: US
Director: John Sturges
Cast: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson
Synopsis
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.
# The Shawshank Redemption
Year: 1994 | Country: United States of America
Director: Frank Darabont
Cast: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, Clancy Brown, Mark Rolston
Synopsis
Framed in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amora