Movies Similar to Porridge: The Desperate Hours

Con Air(1997)

Newly-paroled former US Army ranger Cameron Poe is headed back to his wife, but must fly home aboard a prison transport flight dubbed "Jailbird" taking the “worst of the worst” prisoners, a group described as “pure predators”, to a new super-prison. Poe faces impossible odds when the transport plane is skyjacked mid-flight by the most vicious criminals in the country led by the mastermind — genius serial killer Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom, and backed by black militant Diamond Dog and psychopath Billy Bedlam.

6.8

Elephant(2003)

Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent.

7.0

Birdman of Alcatraz(1962)

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.

7.5

Bringing Up Baby(1938)

David Huxley is waiting to get a bone he needs for his museum collection. Through a series of strange circumstances, he meets Susan Vance, and the duo have a series of misadventures which include a leopard called Baby.

7.5

Cool Hand Luke(1967)

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.

7.7

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The Penalty King(2006)

Lee, a soccer player who descends into depression when he goes blind, is encouraged to take up the game again by a maverick American and the inspiration of Leeds Utd legend, Billy Bremner.

5.0

Reclaim Your Brain(2007)

Frustrated, because he is forced to produce bad TV-shows, a manager of a TV-station, enters the station and manipulates the ratings, to initiate a TV-revolution.

6.7

3-Iron(2004)

A drifter lives in people's houses while they are away and repays them by doing chores for them. His life changes when he meets a beautiful woman who wants to escape her unhappy marriage.

7.8

Lights in the Dusk(2006)

Outcast by his co-workers and living alone, Koistinen is a security guard who works the night shift in a luxury shopping mall in Helsinki. But when icy blonde Mirja approaches him, the lonely Koistinen falls helplessly for her, unaware she is manipulating him for her criminal boyfriend.

6.7

Cape Fear(1991)

Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.

7.3

Brubaker(1980)

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

7.1

Hostage(2005)

When a mafia accountant is taken hostage on his beat, a police officer – wracked by guilt from a prior stint as a negotiator – must negotiate the standoff, even as his own family is held captive by the mob.

6.3

The Real McCoy(1993)

Karen McCoy is released from prison with nothing but the clothes on her back. Before being incarcerated, Karen was the bank robber of her time, but now she wishes for nothing more than to settle down and start a new life. Unfortunately, between a dirty parole officer, old business partners, and an idiot ex, she will have to do the unthinkable in order to save her son.

5.7

Reindeer Games(2000)

After assuming his dead cellmate's identity to get with his girlfriend, an ex-con finds himself the reluctant participant in a casino heist.

5.7

Alles nur Tarnung(1996)

After trying to smuggle a package into prison for his father Willi, Harry and his girlfriend Marlies also end up in jail. While Harry is billeted with Daddy, Marlies is housed just one floor up in the cell of the ageing prostitute Jutta. With Christmas just around the corner, the four of them join forces and plan to break through to their cells to celebrate a lavish party with a can of homemade schnapps.

2.7

Petos(1988)

The very first American-style Post Office robbery in Finland. In the midst of the 60's a gangster quartet led by Hilarius Ruokonen splits up and go into hiding after the heist.

5.2

Bowling for Columbine(2002)

This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.

7.5

Down by Law(1986)

A disc jockey, a pimp and an Italian tourist escape from jail in New Orleans.

7.3

The Spanish Apartment(2002)

A strait-laced French student moves into an apartment in Barcelona with a cast of six other characters from all over Europe. Together, they speak the international language of love and friendship.

7.1

20,000 Years in Sing Sing(1932)

Brash hoodlum Tom Connors enters Sing Sing cocksure of himself and disrespectful toward authority, but his tough but compassionate warden changes him.

6.3