Film
Starred Up
A 19-year-old with a hair-trigger temper gets bumped up to adult prison, where his estranged, dangerous father already runs the wing. Jack O'Connell is a coiled wire of a performance; the violence is sudden, unchoreographed, and horribly convincing. Written by a former prison therapist, it's less concerned with plot than with watching two damaged men fail, again and again, to say what they mean. Not comfortable, but never showing off either.
If you liked this
A Prophet2009
Jacques Audiard's French prison epic tracks a nobody's rise through gang hierarchy with the same patient, unsentimental eye for institutional menace and the strange intimacy violence creates between men.
But It's a slow burn over two and a half hours, and subtitles will put off anyone wanting something immediate.

Bronson2009no page yet
Tom Hardy, terrifying and oddly funny, plays Britain's most notorious prisoner as a man who's turned his own violence into performance art. Stylised where Starred Up is raw, but cut from the same institutional cloth.
But It's theatrical and fourth-wall-breaking rather than naturalistic — if you wanted more grit, this is closer to art-house cabaret.
Animal Kingdom2010no page yet
Ben Mendelsohn again, this time as the most quietly frightening member of an Australian crime family, in a film obsessed with the same question: what do you owe blood that's dangerous to love?
But It's slower and colder than Starred Up, with menace that simmers rather than erupts — patience required.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Work2017
Starred Up's screenwriter Jonathan Asser actually ran anger-management groups like this; this documentary shows the real, unscripted version of the film's therapy scenes.
A documentary shot inside Folsom Prison's real group therapy sessions, where inmates and outside volunteers sit in a circle and take rage apart piece by piece — the exact mechanism Starred Up dramatises, happening for real.
But There's no plot, no stars, just unscripted men breaking down on camera — intense but slow, and some will find it hard to sit with.

More like this (8)
This Is England2007
Shane Meadows' skinhead coming-of-age film shares the same unglamorous, handheld violence and the sense of young men shaped by absent or broken fathers before they ever had a chance.
But It's a period piece steeped in early-80s subculture, which some will find more anthropological than gripping.

Top Boy2011
London estate crime drama with real teeth and one familiar face — Gershwyn Eustache Jnr turns up here too — offering the same unflinching look at cycles of violence, just stretched over seasons instead of one sitting.
But It's a long-term commitment across multiple series, and pacing dips in places between its stronger runs.

Oz1997
HBO's original prison drama, sprawling and brutal, gave the genre its modern template — factions, corruption, brief flickers of grace — years before this film refined it into something tighter.
But Six seasons is a lot, and its soap-opera excesses occasionally undercut the seriousness it's reaching for.

Sexy Beast2001
Ben Kingsley's psychopathic gangster is one of British crime cinema's great monsters, and the film's dread-soaked menace runs on a similar current of masculine violence just under the skin.
But It's a heist thriller at heart, glossier and more stylised than Starred Up's institutional grime.

Chopper2000no page yet
Eric Bana's breakout as real-life Australian criminal Mark 'Chopper' Read shares the same interest in violent men who are also, disturbingly, charismatic and sometimes funny company.
But Its blackly comic tone is more detached and stylised than Starred Up's raw immersion.
The Shawshank Redemption1994
The prison drama most people already love, and worth revisiting for how differently it answers the same setting — hope and dignity instead of Starred Up's feral survival.
But It's warm and redemptive where Starred Up is bleak; go in expecting comfort, not confrontation.

Scum1979
Scum essentially invented the register Starred Up works in — unglamorous state violence shown flatly, without catharsis — and is the clearest line of descent in British cinema.
Alan Clarke's banned-then-broadcast borstal film is the blunt, furious ancestor of every British institutional-violence drama since — cold, procedural brutality with barely any music to soften it.
But It's dated in its filmmaking and pacing, and its shock value has been somewhat dulled by everything it influenced.

The Road2009
Same emotional skeleton in a different genre costume — a father's capacity for tenderness tested by a brutal environment and his own violent instincts.
A father and son cross a burned-out, violent world where every stranger is a threat, and the film asks the same quiet question as Starred Up: can a damaged man still protect and love his boy?
But It's a post-apocalyptic survival film, bleak in an entirely different register, and some will find its despair even less relieved.

People
Cast
Jack O'ConnellEric Love
Ben MendelsohnNeville Love
Rupert FriendOliver Baumer
David AjalaTyrone
Peter FerdinandoSpencer
Anthony WelshHassan
David AveryAshley
Sian BreckinGovernor Cardew
Sam SpruellDeputy Governor Haynes
Gilly GilchristPrincipal Officer Scott
Frederick SchmidtOfficer Gentry
Directing
- David MackenzieDirector
Writing
- Jonathan AsserScreenplay
Production
- Shaheen BaigCasting
- Brian CoffeyCo-Producer
- Andrew BoswellExecutive Producer
- James AthertonExecutive Producer
- Jan PaceExecutive Producer
- Katherine ButlerExecutive Producer
- Sam LavenderExecutive Producer
- Catherine GearyLocation Manager
- Gillian BerrieProducer