Best movies like Breaking Out
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The enthusiastic Reine is forced to take a job as a social worker at Kumla prison.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious
Best tv shows and movies like Breaking Out (1999):
Similar in 81%
Release the Prisoners to Spring (1975)
Plot Summary:
Small and short Frida lives with her long, tall friend in a house in the countryside. Frida rejects the idea that people who has commited crimes should be locked up. One day their own house is burgled by Harald. He is sentenced to prison. Acting in accordance with her philosophy, Frida decides to use all means possible to make it possible for Harald to escape.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Family
Country: Sweden
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: offbeat, humorous, realistic, not serious, biting, suspense
Similar in 90%
Anyway, He's Definitely Dead (2000)
Plot Summary:
A comedy about two men who meet in a detached house in the Stockholm archipelago to write a play, hunt roe dear, hava a sauna and relax. But a tabloid got a news story about the authors and sends a journalist to take photographs and bug their conversations.
IMDB Rating: 3.5
IMDB Votes: 444
Genere: Comedy
Country: Sweden
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 76%
Betsy & Leonard (2012)
Plot Summary:
When DJ Alex is placed under house arrest, he is forced to live together with his ex-girlfriend Karen.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 57
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious, independent film
Similar in 76%
A Little Thing Called Murder (2006)
Plot Summary:
Fast forgery without mistakes. Shoplifting under pressure. Effective body disposal. The ability to multitask various felonies. These are just a few of the "talents" that mother-and-son grifters Sante and Kenny Kimes possess. Based on shocking true events, this flick takes you into the dark, sordid world of this deadly duo, from their bizarre relationship to their heinous crimes. It's no surprise that two-time Emmy winner Judy Davis earned a nomination for this performance.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 601
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, humorous, captivating
Similar in 79%
Doin' Time (1985)
Plot Summary:
Duke Jarrett is sent to jail at the John Dillinger prison. However, the prison looks more like a zoo, more or less ruled by the prisoners themselves.
IMDB Rating: 4.7
IMDB Votes: 285
Genere: Comedy
Country: USA
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags: independent film, parody, humorous, realistic, semi serious, slapstick
Similar in 83%
The Mozart Brothers (1986)
Plot Summary:
This is a comedy about people who work in the theater, live for the theater, think of nothing but the theater. The director seems crazy, the art director has idiotic ideas, and the acting coach is eccentric: they even look like brothers, related by their common obsession for the theater, linked as one with the actors. The new project is Mozart's Don Giovanni, in which the director insists to give it a brand new interpretation and an avant-garde treatment. Now, he has to deal with the violent objection from the actors, the musicians, the singing coach, the stage manager, and even the cafe bar attendants and the cleaners. The situation is further complicated as the director is such a womanizer like Don Juan... and his lovers and kids keep bugging him throughout the rehearsal.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 382
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: Sweden
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, experimental, witty, stylized, semi serious
Similar in 77%
The Prison Shift (2009)
Plot Summary:
Sequel to 'The Night Shift' and 'The Day Shift'.
IMDB Rating: 8.4
IMDB Votes: 433
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Iceland
Duration:
Plot tags: humorous, tragicomedy, realistic, semi serious, offbeat
Similar in 90%
They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way (1978)
Plot Summary:
Dewey (Tim Conway) and Wallace (Chuck McCann) are small-town lawmen who are ordered by the governor to go undercover as prison inmates to find out where a gang of thieves have hidden their loot. While they're undercover, however, the governor dies, and because no one else knows about the ruse Dewey and Wallace are stranded in prison.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 358
Genere: Comedy
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: independent film, slapstick, exciting, parody, humorous, realistic, suspenseful, not serious
Similar in 77%
Gangs from Rosario (2001)
Plot Summary:
City of Rosario. After three decades in prison together in the same cell, Tito and Castor are released. Outside the youth's friends await, as well as mines, tango, nights of drunkenness and a suitcase full of money hidden in the Parana River. They will try to seize the time and live every second trying to retrieve each of those thirty years behind bars. And when things become complicated they will cover each other as they always did.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 162
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Argentina
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, exciting
Similar in 90%
Gossip (2000)
Plot Summary:
Ten actresses test films for the title role of a remake of "Queen Christina".
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 832
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 90%
Doing Time (1979)
Plot Summary:
Times are hard for habitual guest of Her Majesty Norman Stanley Fletcher. The new prison officer, Beale, makes MacKay look soft and what's more, an escape plan is hatching from the cell of prison godfather Grouty and Fletcher wants no part of it. The breakout is set for the day of a morale-raising football match between a 'celebrity' football team and the inmates of Slade. Everything is going to plan until Godber is injured on the goal post. In the ensuing confusion, Fletcher finds himself on the wrong side of the prison walls and must now try and break back into prison.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Crime
Country: UK
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: clever, humorous, realistic, witty, semi serious, independent film
Similar in 79%
Pardon (2005)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true event, Pardon tells the tragicomic story of three friends who end up in prison when they are mistaken as members of a terrorist organization. Ibrahim's fear of uniforms makes him runaway whenever he sees one. Because of this, police mistakes him with a terrorist and takes him and his friend Muzo into custody. Fooled by the police during the interrogation they name another friend, Aydin, in hope of saving themselves. As they all end up in prison, they remember the families and lovers they left behind.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, humorous, cynical, dark comedy, comedy drama, realistic, semi serious, biting, black comedy
Similar in 89%
Sukiyaki (2011)
Plot Summary:
Kenta Kurihara (Tasuku Nagaoka) is sent to prison for battery. In his cell he is referred to as the "newcomer." Meanwhile, Kenta is bummed out with simple meal offerred in prison. The four other prisoners in his jail cell have no problems eating his food. On lunar new year's day the prison offers the traditional Osechi-Ryori dish. The inmates in the cell gather to play a game that has become an annual ritual. They compete for items from each other's dishes by boating about the most delicious things they have ever eaten. Shunsuke Aida (Motoki Ochiai) begins their game by talking about a dish which his mother made.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 57
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: funny, humorous, captivating, entertaining, satirical
Similar in 84%
Trust Me (2010)
Plot Summary:
A comical fresco on human misdemeanors and betrayals... A film about our right to not be perfect.
IMDB Rating: 4.6
IMDB Votes: 834
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Sweden, Norway
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, atmospheric, captivating, offbeat, realistic
Similar in 76%
The Waiters (2006)
Plot Summary:
Taylor Starks and his co-workers, all aspiring actors, toil in a Los Angeles restaurant while "waiting" for their big break.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 39
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious, captivating
Similar in 77%
Cowboys (2013)
Plot Summary:
Six men, one woman (and her brother) come together with one goal - to make the play. It would be probably another common story that this theater group is composed of anti-heroes who float lost in time and space, in a town where it seems that the sun sets in the east. Led by Sasha, a director who has recently returned to his hometown, this group of socially neadaptiranih amateurs starting the fight to their demons and the prejudices that surround them in the society. For dramaturgical template selection western and riding on stereotypes of the genre of the struggle between good and evil, the conflict between civilization and wilderness, the protagonists develop their life stories inevitably influencing and changing each other. Although, as time passes, the show looks increasingly like a mission impossible, almost all of its stakeholders is increasingly seen as a metaphor for their fate and get caught for it as the opportunity of a lifetime.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Croatia
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, captivating, light, funny, sentimental, feel good, realistic
Similar in 80%
The Elusive Corporal (1962)
Plot Summary:
The story serves as a companion piece to Renoir's 1937 film, Grand Illusion, once more bringing together men from across the broad social spectrum of French society to depict one man's Sisyphean efforts to escape captivity in a German POW camp.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, contemplative, semi serious
Similar in 86%
Making Babies (2001)
Plot Summary:
Johan and Anna-Karin have been a couple for years but despite many attempts, Anna-Karin doesn't get pregnant. A visit to a fertility clinic shows why: Johan's sperm quality is too low. Johan is waiting to take over his father's farm, but what's the point if they can never have children? The news also puts a strain on their relationship since Anna-Karin desperately wants to be a mother.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 83%
Hours of Light (2004)
Plot Summary:
September 1987. In a shootout with police, Juan Jose Garfia makes a triple murder. Sentenced to more than one hundred years, is a rebel prisoner, clever and elusive that it has nothing to lose and nobody to worry about. In 1991, manages to escape from a police van jumping up. Stopped after two months of robberies and shootings, Garfia leads several prison riots, against which the authorities takes as a measure subjecting prisoners to a more contentious special isolation regime. Garfia, the prisoner with the highest IQ, avoiding drugs, which seems immune to punishment, and lives two years without seeing anyone, held in a tiny cell and subjected to continuous harassment. There he meets Marimar, a nurse I can barely speak, but between both of a current of mutual understanding.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 256
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, captivating
Similar in 85%
Women of San Quentin (1983)
Plot Summary:
A young female prison guard finds out that her first assignment is to San Quentin, one of the toughest prisons in the country.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 110
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, realistic
Similar in 81%
Across the Moon (1994)
Plot Summary:
Two young women bond while living together out in the California desert to be close to their boyfriends who are serving time at the nearby state prison.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 311
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: independent film, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 83%
Adam & Eva (1997)
Plot Summary:
Adam and Eva have been married for four years. But the romance has disappeared from their relationship and has been replaced by boredom and old routine. When Adam meets his brother's baby-sitter, Jackie, he is immediately attracted to her. They have an affair, but Adam tell himself that they are only friends. However, when Eva finds out that he has a mistress, she leaves him. Adam tries to convince himself that he is free again, but soon realizes that he is still in love with Eva, and must win her back.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Sweden
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sentimental, witty, clever, humorous, realistic, gloomy, semi serious, spoof, parody
Similar in 82%
The Rest is Silence (2007)
Plot Summary:
In 1911-12, the Romanian movie director Grigore Brezianu and the financial tycoon Leon Popescu made together the 2 hours long movie "Romania's Independence" - an as faithful as possible screen adaptation of the real Independence War that had been fought in 1877. Now, "Restul e tacere" tells us, in a loose and half-fictionalized way, the story of this movie making.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Romania
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious, breathtaking, touching
Similar in 88%
Doing Time for Patsy Cline (1997)
Plot Summary:
Following a passion for country music, Ralph leaves his father’s sheep farm in a remote Australian town, armed with a guitar and a plane ticket to Nashville, Tennessee. He hopes to hitchhike to Sydney Airport where his take-off into a successful country/western singing career will hopefully begin. However, fate and his naivety find him hitchhiking with a psychotic drug thief named Boyd, and Boyd's mesmerising girlfriend, Patsy. The plot then splits into a series of parallels, flash forwards and flashbacks. One depicts Ralph’s imprisonment after being framed for drug trafficking. The other follows the dramatic ascent of his career to hype status and the pairing between the dynamic Patsy and himself.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 345
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: touching, feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious, independent film
Similar in 81%
Son of Morning (2011)
Plot Summary:
A young copywriter becomes the most famous man on the planet, overnight, when he is mistaken as the next messiah.
IMDB Rating: 3.9
IMDB Votes: 664
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags: realistic, semi serious, humorous, futuristic
Similar in 78%
The Passion (2010)
Plot Summary:
To avoid being sued, a film director reluctantly agrees to set up and direct the Good Friday celebrations in a small Tuscan town.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 686
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, light, feel good, captivating, realistic
Similar in 80%
Quitters (2015)
Plot Summary:
Quitters tells the story of the Raymans, a wealthy Jewish family that's falling apart. The son, Clark, is a bright and curious high schooler with a talent for manipulation. As his mother May enters treatment for a pill addiction, and he and his father Roger stop getting along, Clark thinks about running away from home. He just needs to decide where to go.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 271
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious, captivating, independent film
Similar in 75%
Jailbait (2004)
Plot Summary:
Randy commits a crime that would normally get him probation and a hefty fine, but in the "three-strikes" world of justice, he finds himself locked up for 25 years. His cellmate Jake is a congenial yet remorseless lifer who casually informs Randy that he slit his wife's throat because she slept with another man just three months after they exchanged vows. Jake recognizes Randy's fear and offers him advice on how to make it in prison. But it soon becomes clear that Jake has much more than mentoring in mind as he takes Randy under his wing. "Jailbait" sets a darkly cerebral tone, juxtaposing brutality with the unattainable ideal of intimacy in the harshest of psychological environments. For these two men so yearning to be anything but who they are and where they are, power is the goal, and it's never clear who truly holds it right up to the last unsettling moment.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 436
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic
Similar in 80%
The Ketchup Effect (2004)
Plot Summary:
A teenager's reputation is destroyed when she falls asleep drunk at a party and some boys take provocative photos of her.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Sweden, Denmark, Finland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious, light, teen, touching, weird
Similar in 78%
Mind the Gap (2007)
Plot Summary:
Two girls of different background, one a immigrant from Turkey and the other a girl that needs to get out of her fathers shadow both apply to the police academy were they become close friends.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sentimental, humorous, realistic, semi serious