Best movies like Papillon

This fact-based prison drama tells the tale of a band of prisoners living in the innovative 2,600-acre prison at Chino, California. The place takes a humanistic approach to reform and there are no armed guards, no lockups and no uniforms. The underlying philosophy is that if these things are not there, the prisoners will not want to escape, and will instead accept their punishment. A new inmate arrives and soon accustoms himself to the new idea. The story includes the Oscar nominated song Unchained Melody.

Three convicts escape from prison on Devil's Island just before Christmas and arrive at a nearby French colonial town. They go to the store of the Ducotels, the only store that gives supplies on credit. They initially intend to take advantage of them but have a change of heart after they find the family is in financial troubles.

In the year 2022, a ruthless prison warden has created the ultimate solution for his most troublesome and violent inmates: Absolom, a secret jungle island where prisoners are abandoned and left to die. But Marine Captain John Robbins, convicted of murdering a commanding officer, is determined to escape the island in order to reveal the truth behind his murderous actions and clear his name.

Based on the true story of teenager James Burns who goes from a suburban street gang to a maximum-security prison cell surrounded by hardened criminals. He turns his life around in prison thanks to the unexpected friendship he forms with a convicted murderer who becomes his mentor.

In 1981, an enthusiastic young adventurer follows his dreams into the Bolivian Amazon jungle with two friends and a guide with a mysterious past. Their journey quickly turns into a terrifying ordeal as the darkest elements of human nature and the deadliest threats of the wilderness lead to an all-out fight for survival.

Suburbanite Ron is spoiled, young and not overly worried about the marijuana charges leveled against him. But, after being made out to be a drug dealer, he faces a five-year jail sentence in San Quentin State Prison. Physically frail and unaccustomed to his rough surroundings, Ron is primed to fall victim to sexual predators and bullying guards – that is, until he's befriended by Earl, a veteran inmate who finds meaning in protecting the vulnerable new kid.

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.

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 young man who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending 30 years in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter ego, Charles Bronson.

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.

An African American male is imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement after being found guilty of murdering his wife, as he's haunted by internal demons and his dead wife, and pushed to the breaking point by an abusive female guard.

Suave thief Colman is sent to Devil's Island, where he becomes romantically involved with the wife of sadistic warden Digges.

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 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.

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.

Set in San Tiburon, the world's most dangerous maximum-security penitentiary and home to the world's most treacherous superpowered criminals, where tensions among the inmates and staff heighten, leading to anarchy that engulfs the prison and order is turned upside down.

Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of Turkey. The Turkish 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".

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.

A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.

South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.

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 skills are put to the test. He's framed and incarcerated in a master prison he designed himself. He needs to escape and find the person who put him behind bars.

Terminal Island, New York: 2020. Overcrowding in the US penal system has reached a breaking point. Prisons have been turned over to a monolithic Weyland Corporation, which sees jails full of thugs as an opportunity for televised sport. Adrenalized inmates, a global audience hungry for violence and a spectacular, enclosed arena come together to form the 'Death Race', the biggest, most brutal event.

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.

The Canadian policeman Louis Burke is assigned in a jail to investigate the murders of prisoners and jailors. When in jail, Louis, using his outstandings martial arts skills, is able to save his life and make himself respected in that violent world. At least, helped by two another prisoners, he succeded in finding the truth about the dreadful crimes. In a violent and corrupt prison, decorated cop Louis Burke must infiltrate the jail to find answers to a number of inside murders. What he finds is a struggle of life and death tied in to his own past.

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

A freedom-loving French journalist sacrifices his happiness and security to battle Nazi tyranny.

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.

After a shoot-out kills five FBI agents in Kansas City the Bureau target John Dillinger as one of the men to hunt down. Waiting for him to break Federal law they sort out several other mobsters, while Dillinger's bank robbing exploits make him something of a folk hero. Escaping from jail he finds Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson have joined the gang and pretty soon he is Public Enemy Number One. Now the G-men really are after him.

Frank Perry is an institutionalized convict twelve years into a life sentence without parole. When his estranged daughter falls ill, he is determined to make peace with her before it's too late. He develops an ingenious escape plan, and recruits a dysfunctional band of escapists - misfits with a mutual dislike for one other but united by their desire to escape their hell hole of an existence.

Locked up for a minor crime, 19 year old JR quickly learns the harsh realities of prison life. Protection, if you can get it, is paramount. JR soon finds himself under the watchful eye of Australia's most notorious criminal, Brendan Lynch, but protection comes at a price.

Imprisoned Harry Lomart is a vicious, brute of a man and yet he is prepared to do his long jail term as he is confident that on his release his beautiful wife Pat will be waiting for him, but a visit from Pat brings him his worst nightmare.

Two men in 1930s Mississippi become friends after being sentenced to life in prison together for a crime they did not commit.

Disgraced ex-England football captain, Danny 'Mean Machine' Meehan, is thrown in jail for assaulting two police officers. He keeps his head down and has the opportunity to forget everything and change the lives of the prisoners. When these prisoners have the chance to put one over the evil guards during a prison football match, Danny takes the lead.

Inspired by a true story. A petty criminal sent to Alcatraz in the 1930s is caught attempting to make an escape. As punishment he is put in solitary confinement. The maximum stay is supposed to be 19 days, but Henri spends years alone, cold and in complete darkness, only to emerge a madman and soon to be a murderer. The story follows a rookie lawyer attempting to prove that Alcatraz was to blame.

Monroe Hutchens is the heavyweight champion of Sweetwater, a maximum security prison. He was convicted to a life sentence due to a passionate crime. Iceman Chambers is the heavyweight champion, who lost his title due to a rape conviction to ten years in Sweetwater. WHen these two giants collide in the same prison, they fight against each other disputing who is the real champion.

Armand and Marie survive in the streets until charitable (and wealthy) scientist Pierre Marcel takes Armand in after a botched robbery. Marie, a fiery Apache, swears revenge on Marcel for taking her lover away from her.

A prison story. Father Jack finds love with a male guard in the prison. Some of the other inmates suspect he's been sentenced for paedophilia.

A woman joins her fiance at a Malaysian prison camp only to discover he's become an alcoholic.

Two men escape from the French penal colony but not from their jealousy over a woman.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1971. Carlos Robledo Puch is a 19-year-old boy with an angelic face, but a vocational thief as well, who acts ruthlessly, without remorse. When he meets Ramón, they follow together a dark path of crime and death.

A crime boss tries to cause a riot and prison break while behind bars.

A French doctor sentenced for treason performs brain surgery on the prison commandant's daughter.

A TV adaptation of the classic Alexandre Dumas novel. Edmond Dantes is falsely accused by those jealous of his good fortune, and is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the notorious island prison, Chateau d'If. While imprisoned, he meets the Abbe Faria, a fellow prisoner whom everyone believes to be mad. The Abbe tells Edmond of a fantastic treasure hidden away on a tiny island, that only he knows the location of. After many years in prison, the old Abbe dies, and Edmond escapes disguised as the dead body. Now free, Edmond must find the treasure the Abbe told him of, so he can use the new-found wealth to exact revenge on those who have wronged him.

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.

Convicts escaping from Devil's Island come under the influence of a strange Christ-like figure.

After his death sentence is commuted to life in prison, John Resko is transferred from Sing-Sing to Dannemora where, with the help of a humane prison guard, he becomes a rehabilitated man and a successful painter.

A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.

A bush pilot is hired for $50,000 to go to Mexico to free an innocent prisoner.

In 1916, a group of prisoners plot their escape from the notorious fortress located in French Guiana.

Loaded with a hilarious cast of comedians and internet personalities, The Bid follows Maurquis Boone and Richard “Philly Filthy Rich” Harris serving time for a crime they didn’t commit. Locked up, Boone & Rich encounter a variety of hardened, yet hilarious characters as they fight to prove their innocence and make it out the penitentiary in one piece.

A riot in a state prison is staged to cover up an escape attempt, during which many inmates and guards are killed. Shot on location at Arizona State Prison.