Best movies like Purgatory

Similar in 87%

An Innocent Man (1989)

Plot Summary:

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.

Similar in 75%

Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami (1988)

Plot Summary:

There is no question that the Arab terrorist portrayed by Robert Davi is guilty of killing five US citizens in Barcelona. Even his lawyers have zero respect for the rabidly sociopathic Davi. But Jewish defence attorney Ron Leibman is obsessed with the concept of Due Process, and has vowed that Davi will receive a scrupulously fair trial when the terrorist is extradited to America. The defence mounted by Leibman confounds and aggravates government prosecutor Sam Waterston--but he, like Leibman, remains a man of judiciary integrity.

Similar in 90%

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.

Similar in 84%

Animal (2005)

Plot Summary:

His name: infamous. His reputation: ruthless. But when James "Animal"Allen is locked up in a maximum security prison, he meets a revolutionary who changes his life. Now a reformed man, James is released only to find that his own son has assumed a life of crime and violence. Can a father haunted by his past redeem his family from the very streets he created, or will he be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice?.

Similar in 85%

Mean Dog Blues (1978)

Plot Summary:

Former TV documentary filmmaker Mel Stuart tries to inject an acceptable degree of verisimilitude in Mean Dog Blues. A victim of circumstance, country and western musician Paul Ramsey (Gregg Henry) finds himself on a Southern chain gang. Captain Omar Kinsman (George Kennedy) snarls a lot as the obligatory sadistic prison guard, but the film's real villains are Victor and Donna Lacey (William Windom and Tina Louise) as the Bonnie-and-Clyde couple who get Henry into trouble. Listed as editor is Housley Stevenson, the son of the late Hollywood character-actor Onslow Stevens.

Similar in 88%

186 Dollars to Freedom (2012)

Plot Summary:

A young California surfer has to grow up in a hurry when he is thrown into a Peruvian political prison in 1980.

Similar in 81%

Scrubbers (1982)

Plot Summary:

Two girls escape from an open borstal for two very different reasons; Annetta to attempt to visit her baby daughter, who is being raised in a convent; and Carol, who hopes to be recaptured and sent to a closed borstal where she knows her girlfriend Doreen is being held. Carol's plan works, although she is devastated to find that not only has Doreen found herself a new girlfriend inside (who both taunt and tease Carol), when Annetta is arrested at the convent and sent to the same closed borstal, she assumes it was Carol who "grassed" her up and proceeds to plan her revenge. Carol finds protection in the form of inmate Eddie, while Annetta's constant bullying attempts keep her in solitary confinement; however, Carol's world is turned upside-down when Eddie is released from borstal and her protection is gone... Written by Rhino.