Movies like Brubaker
If Brubaker hooked you with its crime and drama, these are the films to watch next. Every pick says why it matches.
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCool Hand Luke (1967)
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPapillon (1973)
A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMurder in the First (1995)
A young, inexperienced public defender is assigned to defend an inmate accused of committing murder while behind bars.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAttica (1980)
Acclaimed dramatization recreating the incidents surrounding the 1971 revolt in New York's Attica State Prison that lasted for 23 days and resulted in the greatest casualty toll between Americans since the Civil War.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Imprisoned 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 amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMidnight Express (1978)
Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBirdman of Alcatraz (1962)
After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGideon's Trumpet (1980)
True story of Clarence Gideon's fight to be appointed counsel at the expense of the state. This landmark case led to the Supreme Court's decision which extended this right to all criminal defendants.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Short Eyes (1977)
A young man who is charged with child molestation is placed in New York City’s infamous Tombs prison. When the other inmates in his cell block find out what he is charged with, life becomes extremely difficult for him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
The Last Castle (2001)
A court-martialed general rallies together 1200 inmates to rise against the system that put him away.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Longest Yard (1974)
A football player-turned-convict organizes a team of inmates to play against a team of prison guards. His dilemma is that the warden asks him to throw the game in return for an early release, but he is also concerned about the inmates' lack of self-esteem.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPenitentiary (1979)
A hitchhiker named Martel Gordone gets in a fight with two bikers over a prostitute, and one of the bikers is killed. Gordone is arrested and sent to prison, where he joins the prison's boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole and to establish his dominance over the prison's toughest gang.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Lock Up (1989)
Frank Leone is nearing the end of his prison term for a relatively minor crime. Just before he is paroled, however, Warden Drumgoole takes charge. Drumgoole was assigned to a hell-hole prison after his administration was publicly humiliated by Leone, and has now arrived on the scene to ensure that Leone never sees the light of day.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPrison 77 (2022)
Modelo Prison. Barcelona, 1977. A young accountant, awaiting trial for embezzlement with a possible 20 years sentence, joins a group of prisoners demanding amnesty.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBad Boys (1983)
Mick O'Brien is a young Chicago street thug torn between a life of petty crime and the love of his girlfriend. But when the heist of a local drug dealer goes tragically wrong Mick is sentenced to a brutal juvenile prison where violence is a rite of passage and respect is measured in vengeance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFast-Walking (1982)
A dirty corrections officer gets involved in a murder plot involving one of the inmates.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Caged (1950)
A single mistake puts a 19-year old girl behind bars, where she experiences the terrors and torments of women in prison.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLockdown (2000)
Avery (Jones) returns to college as a competitive swimmer after getting his life back on track. But his life takes another unexpected turn when he and his two friends (Bonds, Casseus) are wrongly accused of murder and end up in prison.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStraight Time (1978)
After being released on parole, a burglar attempts to go straight, get a regular job, and just go by the rules. He soon finds himself back in jail at the hands of a power-hungry parole officer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Perfect World (1993)
A kidnapped boy strikes up a friendship with his captor: an escaped convict on the run from the law, headed by an honorable U.S. Marshal.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBy Any Means (2026)
In 1960s Mississippi, a young Black FBI agent is forced to partner with a notorious mafia hitman to investigate a wave of brutal civil rights murders.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn the Name of the Father (1993)
A small-time Belfast thief, Gerry Conlon, is wrongly convicted of an IRA bombing in London, along with his father and friends, and spends 15 years in prison fighting to prove his innocence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTerminal Island (1973)
After the U.S. Supreme Court banishes the death penalty, California decides to exile all convicted murderers to the remote island of San Bruno, overseen by a tyrannical camp leader who forces all female inmates into sex slavery.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
SnoozefestMovies like thisAn Innocent Man (1989)
Jimmie Rainwood was minding his own business when two corrupt police officers (getting an address wrong) burst into his house, expecting to find a major drug dealer. Rainwood is shot, and the officers frame him as a drug dealer. Rainwood is convicted of drug dealing, based on the perjured evidence of a police informant. Thrown into a seedy jail, fighting to prove his innocence is diffucult when he has to deal with the realities of prison life, where everyone claims they were framed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Life of David Gale (2003)
A man against capital punishment is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCadence (1990)
As punishment for drunken, rebellious behavior, a young white soldier is thrown into a stockade populated entirely by black inmates. But instead of falling victim to racial hatred, the soldier joins forces with his fellow prisoners and rises up against the insanely tyrannical and bigoted prison warden.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHunger (2008)
The story of Bobby Sands, the IRA member who led the 1981 hunger strike during The Troubles in which Irish Republican prisoners tried to win political status.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWomen in Cages (1971)
Carol Jeffries is a naive American woman staying in the Philippines. She is given ten years in prison after being set up by her drug-dealer boyfriend, Rudy. She endures the harsh conditions, sadistic head matron and attempts on her life, then convinces her cell-mates to try to escape with her through the jungle, in spite of the knowledge that ruthless trackers will be sent out after them.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Naked Cage (1986)
A young woman is falsely convicted of a bank robbery and sent to a maximum-security prison run by a corrupt warden, where she is forced to suffer various indignities.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Brubaker?
The closest matches to Brubaker are Escape from Alcatraz, Cool Hand Luke, Papillon.
How are movies similar to Brubaker chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Brubaker, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.
Are there English movies like Brubaker?
Yes: Escape from Alcatraz, Cool Hand Luke, Papillon.