Best movies like Hell in the City

After serving time in prison for attempted murder of the man who caused his wife's death, hard-luck loser Lonnie comes home to find that all of his belongings have been sold and his two boys have been given to strangers to raise. He sets out across the country to find them and possibly to find himself.

When two troublemaking female prisoners (one a revolutionary, the other a former harem-girl) can't seem to get along, they are chained together and extradited for safekeeping. The women, still chained together, stumble, stab, and cat-fight their way across the wilderness, igniting a bloody shootout between gangsters and a group of revolutionaries.

A woman claims she had an affair with a married neurosurgeon and stands trial for allegedly harassing him.

A reporter and a lawyer investigate a women's prison and help an inmate who does not belong there.

An abused wife heads to California to become a movie star while her nephew back in Alabama has to deal with a racially-motivated murder involving a corrupt sheriff.

When Colin Warner was wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend Carl King devoted his life to proving his innocence.

Four prison inmates have been hatching a plan to literally dig out of jail when another prisoner, Claude Gaspard, is moved into their cell. They take a risk and share their plan with the newcomer. Over the course of three days, the prisoners and friends break through the concrete floor using a bed post and begin to make their way through the sewer system -- yet their escape is anything but assured.

After a high-speed car chase, Madea winds up behind bars because her quick temper gets the best of her. Meanwhile, Assistant District Attorney Josh Hardaway lands a case that's too personal to handle: that of a young prostitute and former drug addict named Candace. When Candace winds up in jail, Madea takes the young woman under her protective wing.

Forced to work under slave-like conditions in a "prison for profit" program, the inmates of a mostly-African-American female prison, Whitehead Correctional, try to take over the institution. At the core of the story is Frances, who finds herself in prison after being falsely convicted of murder, and who is told that her baby has been murdered, sparking her to lead her fellow inmates in the protest

A lovely dame with dangerous lies employs the services of a private detective, who is quickly caught up in the mystery and intrigue of a statuette known as the Maltese Falcon.

Two men (Pras, Michael Goorjian) in drag purposely get arrested in order to recover their winning lottery-ticket from an inmate at a women's prison.

A new inmate at a juvenile reformatory tries to organize a mass breakout.

A beautiful young dentist working in a tough British prison starts to become attracted to a violent inmate after the break-up of her marriage, and embarks upon an illicit affair with him, with terrible consequences for all.

A heated game of poker causes three men incarcerated for nonviolent offenses to brutalize their cellmate before taking drastic measures in order to cover up their crime.

The film is a semi-biographical story based on the experiences of former prison guard Ronnie Thompson who spent seven years working in some of the UK's most dangerous prisons. Based on Thompson's book of the same name, the project stars James D'Arcy (Master & Commander), Noel Clarke (Kidulthood), Frank Harper (The Football Factory), Jamie Foreman (Layer Cake), Andrew Shim (This Is England) and Kate Magowan (Stardust). The story revolves around former soldier Sam Norwood who takes a job as a prison officer when he returns from Iraq and becomes exposed to the underworld of prison culture - including corrupt guards and drug trafficking.

This film traces the prison life of a group of women who-rather than being prepared to reenter society-are brought to the limits of depravity. Martine, wrongly imprisoned will bear the scars of a prison system wrongly based on punishment rather than rehabilitation.

Four hardened crooks break out of prison. Hunted down, with nowhere to run, they seek refuge in the only place the police cannot follow, a Cistercian monastery. Cut off from the outside world, a nightmare stand off develops between the fugitives, ready to kill in defence of their dearly purchased freedom, and the monks they' re holding hostage. But in this potentially lethal confrontation, nothing is quite as it seems. The game' s been rigged from the start. Requiem' s a violent and fast paced French film that really delivers.

Giuseppe Di Noi, an Italian surveyor living in Switzerland, gets arrested at the border while going back to Italy with his family for a vacation. But can someone tell the man why?

Rod Steiger stars as a vigilante who with the aid of his helper, Isaac Hayes, captures men who he considers evil and executes them in his homemade electric chair.

In a filthy, cramped prison, some inmates must submit to injustices perpetrated by the head of the guards and his tormentors. Above them all, however, is the Judge, whom no one has ever seen: feared by both inmates and guards, he imposes the laws to be obeyed. The prisoners know the rules to follow but remember nothing of their lives; they know only the evil they have done to get there. Almost out of nowhere, a new prisoner joins the company: Princess. She is a beautiful woman, covered only by a fur coat of raven feathers...

Haunted Prison - AKA Death Row - a horrifying live action film based on the short story by Kevin VanHook-takes place at Isla de la Roca Penitentiary. Rumor has it the Devil himself spat up the place out of the depths of hell, and man turned it into a prison for the most dangerous prisoners in the South. The monstrous building is steeped in the evil created by centuries of murder and injustice and is haunted by vengeful ghosts. Isla de la Roca was abandoned after being soaked in blood by a horrific massacre of inmates and guards. A gang of fugitives from a cop-killing robbery seek refuge within the razor wire of the prison walls at the same time as a documentary film crew arrives to tell the story of the penitentiary. When these groups cross paths within the cruel walls of Isla de la Roca, will anyone get out alive?

A former kingpin of the streets, Miles “Cain” Skinner is doing life in prison. He is feared and respected among the inmates. When Cain learns that his sentence will be shortened only by brain cancer, his urgency to change his ways goes into overdrive.

The young, pretty and shy Angela Duvall is jailed for murder in some Latin American country. In the prison she gets brutally "initiated" by the other inmates. The nice, honest and handsome prison doctor believe she's innocent and tries to help her out.

A jailed auto mechanic must run for his life after he witnesses the murder of a fellow inmate by two prison guards.

Lynn Schaffer is willfully irresponsible once too often, gets fired and refuses a plea-bargain with her employer. She's now convicted and because of this uncooperative attitude gets the maximum sentence, 10 years in a women's jail wing. Model husband Larry, who wasn't informed of her dumb schemes is left running her appeal, the household and spoiled daughter who now feels abandoned. Since most inmates are junkies or prostitutes, sergeant Ed Crang and fellow corrupt jailers can run a 'favors in kind exchange'. For rebels, it gets worse. Larry however has his own radio show, so it all hangs on gathering proof.

Nicole (Agnes Soral) is sent up the river for infanticide in this routine woman-in-prison feature. There she meets Marthe (Annie Girardot), a fellow murderess who receives special treatment from the warden Dessombes (Marie-Christine Barrault). The warden frames Nelly (Bernadette Lafont) for drug possession and has her thrown into solitary confinement. Sabien (Corinne Touzet) is a newcomer convicted of armed robbery who latches on to the lesbian Lucie (Milva), a longtime prisoner slated for release.

In this deeply personal film, director Roger Ross Williams sets out on a journey to understand the complex forces of racism and greed currently at work in America's prison system.

A prison drama where an old mobster and a prison guard must find a way to coexist so that imprisonment can become less so, and perhaps reveal the paradox that is behind the very concept of captivity.

A bitter burglar, a prostitute and an elderly shoplifter spend their first day out of jail.

Ingo Hasselbach, whose parents were Communist Party members in East Germany during his childhood, has lived at both ends of the political seesaw. The question of how people reach a change of heart is a profound one; Hasselbach describes the external forces that led to his founding Germany's first neo-Nazi political party and the internal ones that led him away from it five years later.

Female prisoners train dogs to aid people with disabilities in a program started by a nun (Laura Dern).

Based on the custody case involving Elizabeth Morgan and the subsequent Elizabeth Morgan Act.

A pretty young college student is arrested during a demonstration. She is taken to a notorious detention center, where she is subjected to sexual harassment by lesbian inmates and guards, and becomes the target of a sadistic, bullwhip-wielding warden.

Russian inmate Boyka, now severely hobbled by the knee injury suffered at the end of Undisputed 2. No longer the feared prison fighter he was, he has declined so far that he is now good only for cleaning toilets. But when a new prison fight tournament begins - an international affair, matching the best fighters from prisons around the globe, enticing them with the promise of freedom for the winner - Boyka must reclaim his dignity and fight for his position in the tournament.

When a courageous young woman and a radical lawyer discover a pattern of illegal involuntary sterilizations in California’s women’s prison system, they take to the courtroom to wage a near-impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. With a growing team of investigators inside prison working with colleagues on the outside, they uncover a series of statewide crimes - from dangerously inadequate health care to sexual assault to coercive sterilizations - primarily targeting women of color. But no one believes them. This shocking legal drama captured over seven years features extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated women, demanding our attention to a shameful and ongoing legacy of eugenics and reproductive injustice in the United States.