If You Liked Papillon, Watch These Next
Finished Papillon (1973) and want more of the same? These 19 movies are what its fans watched next, ranked by how often people who liked it also liked these. Like Papillon, most of them are crime, drama.
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19 titles · updated 2nd October 2026
1.Papillon(2017)
7.3AdventureCrimeDramaAlso crime and drama
Henri “Papillon” Charrière, a safecracker from the Parisian underworld, is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, where he forges a strong friendship with Louis Dega, a counterfeiter who needs his protection.
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2.The Shawshank Redemption(1994)
8.7DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
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…
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3.Cool Hand Luke(1967)
7.7DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
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…
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5.The Green Mile(1999)
8.5FantasyDramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
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6.Escape from Alcatraz(1979)
7.5DramaThrillerAlso drama
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.
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7.Birdman of Alcatraz(1962)
7.5DramaCrimeHistoryAlso drama and crime
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,…
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9.Midnight Express(1978)
7.4DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
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".
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10.Shutter Island(2010)
8.2DramaThrillerMysteryAlso drama
World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.
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11.The Mustang(2019)
6.9DramaAlso drama
While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse.
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12.Kiss of the Spider Woman(1985)
7.0DramaAlso drama
The story of two radically different men thrown together in a Latin American prison cell. One is Valentin, a journalist being tortured for his political beliefs. The other is Molina, a gay window-dresser who fills their lonely nights by spinning romantic fantasies drawn from memories of old movies.
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13.Waiting for the Barbarians(2020)
5.9DramaHistoryAlso drama
At an isolated frontier outpost, a colonial magistrate suffers a crisis of conscience when an army colonel arrives looking to interrogate the locals about an impending uprising, using cruel tactics that horrify the magistrate.
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14.Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile(2019)
7.0DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy, from the perspective of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who refused to believe the truth about him for years.
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15.The Silence of the Lambs(1991)
8.3CrimeThrillerDramaAlso crime and drama
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and…
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16.GoodFellas(1990)
8.5DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
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17.Public Enemies(2009)
6.7CrimeHistoryDramaAlso crime and drama
Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger's charm and audacity endear him to much of America's downtrodden public, but he's also a thorn in the side of J. Edgar Hoover and the fledgling FBI. Desperate to capture the elusive outlaw, Hoover makes Dillinger his first Public Enemy Number One and assigns his top agent,…
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18.Bad Boys(1983)
7.0CrimeDramaThrillerAlso crime and drama
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.
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19.The Valachi Papers(1972)
6.5CrimeDramaAlso crime and drama
When Joe Valachi has a price put on his head by Don Vito Genovese, he must take desperate steps to protect himself while in prison. An unsuccessful attempt to slit his throat puts him over the edge to break the sacred code of silence.
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