Best prison movies with strong hardened criminals?

Brawl In Cell Block 99 was very good.
I consider Vince Vaughn more of a comedic actor but he sure played a tough SOB in this one!

Get The Gringo was a real good one too. I know Mel Gibson isn’t for everyone, the guy has behaved like a real wreck in public but on-screen he’s just always so great.

Mel plays a dangerous criminal that gets locked up in a gigantic Mexican prison. Nearly everyone in there wants to kill the Gringo!

Good luck Mexican prisoners, Mel is going to show you all the business.

It’s a very good movie👍

Midnight Express 1978

Not a great deal of fighting but a very disturbing movie even though much of it was fabricated. It's supposed to be based on a true story.

Shot Caller
Starred Up

Escape From Alcatraz is a real classic.

Funny, it’s a great movie and we all rooted for these guys to escape but they were all thieves in real life with scores of arrests between them. Not the sorts you’d want around your neighborhood.

They likely all drowned, they say the San Francisco Bay is very cold and the water is choppy for whatever reason and there are supposedly big sharks swimming around out there.

Great movie though 10/10!

I highly recommend Women’s Prison Massacre (1983), starring the beautiful Laura Gemser as Emanuelle. It is the apex of early 80’s women in prison Italian sleaze, if you like that kind of thing.

Not exactly what you are looking for but maybe interesting: Con Air

Bad Boys...no not the lame Will Smith movie, the one with Sean Penn was early in his career.