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Movies like Boys of Abu Ghraib

Key Features:
War crimes, Moral dilemma, Friendship, Guilt, Soldier, Psychological abuse, Post-traumatic stress, Ethical conflict, Human rights, War, Violence-moderate
Tone:
serious, gritty, dramatic
Target Audience:
Viewers interested in war dramas, Those who appreciate films with moral complexity, People interested in political thrillers
Emotional Arc:
Duty → Connection → Disillusionment

Boys of Abu Ghraib

2014-03-15
Boys of Abu Ghraib Poster - Find Similar Movies

An American soldier deployed at Abu Ghraib finds himself behind the walls of the infamous Hard Site, where he develops a secret friendship with an Iraqi detainee.

Genres
Drama, War, Thriller
Cast
Luke Moran, Sean Astin, Sara Paxton, Michael Welch, John Heard, Elijah Kelley, John Robinson, Kristen DeVore Rakes, Omid Abtahi, Jermaine Williams
Crew
Luke Moran, Luke Moran
Rating
5.432(66 votes)
Boys of Abu GhraibBoys of Abu Ghraib
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Camp X-Ray
6.7

A young woman joins the military to be part of something bigger than herself and her small-town roots. Instead, she ends up as a new guard at Guantanamo Bay, where her mission is far from black and white. Surrounded by hostile jihadists and aggressive squadmates, she strikes up an unusual friendship with one of the detainees.



Secrets of War
6.628

Tuur and Lambert are best friends. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble.



The Grey Zone
6.6

The story of Auschwitz's twelfth Sonderkommando — one of the thirteen consecutive "Special Squads" of Jewish prisoners placed by the Nazis in the excruciating moral dilemma of assisting in the extermination of fellow Jews in exchange for a few more months of life.



Casualties of War
7.2

During the Vietnam War, a soldier finds himself the outsider of his own squad when they unnecessarily kidnap a female villager.



The Kill Team
6.46

When Andrew Briggman — a young soldier in the US Army during the invasion of Afghanistan — witnesses the murderous behavior of fellow soldiers, under the direction of a malevolent Sergeant, he faces a moral dilemma. His increasingly-violent platoon becomes suspicious that someone in their ranks has turned on them, and Andrew begins to fear for his safety. A fictionalized dramatization based on a true story.



The Boys in Company C

Disheartened by futile combat, appalled by the corruption of their South Vietnamese ally, and constantly endangered by the incompetence of their own company commander, the young men find a possible way out of the war. They are told that if they purposely lose a soccer game against a South Vietnamese team, they can spend the rest of their tour playing exhibition games behind the lines.



Close
Close(2022)
7.785

Two 13-year-old boys spend an idyllic summer together, but their connection is put to the test when they become the subject of speculation at school.



Land of Mine
7.8

In the days following the surrender of Germany in May 1945, a group of young German prisoners of war is handed over to the Danish authorities and subsequently sent to the West Coast, where they are ordered to remove the more than two million mines that the Germans had placed in the sand along the coast. With their bare hands, crawling around in the sand, the boys are forced to perform the dangerous work under the leadership of a Danish sergeant.



The Yellow Birds

Two young soldiers, Bartle and Murph, navigate the terrors of the Iraq war under the command of the older, troubled Sergeant Sterling. All the while, Bartle is tortured by a promise he made to Murph's mother before their deployment.



Battle for Haditha
6.3

An investigation of the massacre of 24 men, women and children in Haditha, Iraq allegedly shot by 4 U.S. Marines in retaliation for the death of a U.S. Marine killed by a roadside bomb. The movie follows the story of the Marines of Kilo Company, an Iraqi family, and the insurgents who plant the roadside bomb.



Enemy Mine
6.9

A soldier from Earth crashlands on an alien world after sustaining battle damage. Eventually he encounters another survivor, but from the enemy species he was fighting; they band together to survive on this hostile world. In the end the human finds himself caring for his enemy in a completely unexpected way.



The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone seems to be wearing striped pajamas. Unaware of Shmuel's fate as a Jewish prisoner or the role his own Nazi father plays in his imprisonment, Bruno embarks on a dangerous journey inside the camp's walls.



Saving Private Ryan
8.221

As U.S. troops storm the beaches of Normandy, three brothers lie dead on the battlefield, with a fourth trapped behind enemy lines. Ranger captain John Miller and seven men are tasked with penetrating German-held territory and bringing the boy home.



Day Zero
Day Zero(2007)
4.9

The military draft is back. Three best friends are drafted and given 30 days to report for duty. In that time they're forced to confront everything they believe about courage, duty, love, friendship and honor. If called to serve, what would you do?



Semper Fi
Semper Fi(2019)
5.957

Cal is a dedicated cop who also serves as a sergeant in the Marine Corps Reserve. When his reckless half brother lands in jail for accidentally killing a man, Cal and his buddies hatch a plan to break him out of prison -- no matter what the cost.



Sand Castle
6.515

Set during the occupation of Iraq, a squad of U.S. soldiers try to protect a small village.



Unthinkable
6.802

The government gets wind of a plot to destroy America involving a trio of nuclear weapons for which the whereabouts are unknown. It's up to a seasoned interrogator and an FBI agent to find out exactly where the nukes are.



Green Zone
6.5

During the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad in 2003, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller and his team of Army inspectors are dispatched to find weapons of mass destruction believed to be stockpiled in the Iraqi desert. Rocketing from one booby-trapped and treacherous site to the next, the men search for deadly chemical agents but stumble instead upon an elaborate cover-up that threatens to invert the purpose of their mission.



Recon
Recon(2019)
4.908

Four American soldiers in WW2, after witnessing the vicious murder of an innocent civilian at the hands of their platoon Sergeant, are sent on a reconnaissance/suicide mission led by a local partisan.



Sons
Sons(2024)
6.785

Eva, an idealistic prison officer, is faced with the dilemma of her life when a young man from her past gets transferred to the prison where she works. Without revealing her secret, Eva asks to be moved to the young man’s ward – the toughest and most violent in the prison. Here begins an unsettling psychological thriller, where Eva’s sense of justice puts both her morality and future at stake.



Little Nikita
6.1

An FBI agent works to uncover an all-American family as Soviet sleeper agents, and gets caught up in friendship with their oblivious teenage son.



The Boy Behind the Door

Bobby tries to save himself and his best friend when they are kidnapped on their way home from school.



American Skin
7.1

A Marine veteran working as a school janitor tries to mend his relationship with his son after a divorce. When his son is killed by a police officer found innocent without standing trial, he takes matters into his own hands.



Courage Under Fire
6.5

A US Army officer, who made a "friendly fire" mistake that was covered up, has been reassigned to a desk job. He is tasked to investigate a female chopper commander's worthiness to be awarded the Medal of Honor. At first all seems in order. But then he begins to notice inconsistencies between the testimonies of the witnesses...



The Hurt Locker
7.256

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.



WarGames
WarGames(1983)
7.069

High school student David Lightman has a talent for hacking. But while trying to hack into a computer system to play unreleased video games, he unwittingly taps into the Department of Defense's war computer and initiates a confrontation of global proportions. Together with his friend and a wizardly computer genius, David must race against time to outwit his opponent and prevent a nuclear Armageddon.



The Good Lie
7.4

A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.



Redacted
Redacted(2007)
5.997

A fictional documentary discusses the effects the Iraq war has had on soldiers and local people through interviews with members of an American military unit, the media, and local Iraqis.



Danny Boy
Danny Boy(2021)
6.8

Soldier Brian Wood, is accused of war crimes in Iraq by the human rights lawyer Phil Shiner. The two men go head to head in a legal and moral conflict that takes us from the battlefield, at so-called Checkpoint Danny Boy, to the courtroom and one of Britain’s biggest ever public inquiries, the Al-Sweady Inquiry.



Route Irish
6

A private security contractor in Iraq rejects the official explanation of his friend's death and decides to investigate.



Platoon
Platoon(1986)
7.746

As a young and naive recruit in Vietnam, Chris Taylor faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.



Rules of Engagement

A Marine Colonel is brought to court-martial after ordering his men to fire on demonstrators surrounding the American embassy in Yemen.



A War
A War(2015)
6.6

Company commander Claus Michael Pedersen and his men are stationed in Helmand, Afghanistan. Meanwhile back in Denmark, with a husband at war and three children missing their father, everyday life is a struggle for Claus' wife Maria. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy Taliban crossfire. In order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that ultimately sees him return to Denmark accused of a war crime.



Spiderhead
5.8

A prisoner in a state-of-the-art penitentiary begins to question the purpose of the emotion-controlling drugs he's testing for a pharmaceutical genius.



Diamonds of the Night

Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Ultimately, they are hunted down by a group of old, armed home-guardists.



The Crying Game
6.8

Irish Republican Army member Fergus forms an unexpected bond with Jody, a kidnapped British soldier in his custody, despite the warnings of fellow IRA members Jude and Maguire. Jody makes Fergus promise he'll visit his girlfriend, Dil, in London, and when Fergus flees to the city, he seeks her out. Hounded by his former IRA colleagues, he finds himself increasingly drawn to the enigmatic, and surprising, Dil.



Son of Saul
7.1

In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son, seeking to give him a proper jewish burial.



Bad Boys
Bad Boys(1983)
7

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.



Sleepers
Sleepers(1996)
7.601

Two gangsters seek revenge on the state jail worker who during their stay at a youth prison sexually abused them. A sensational court hearing takes place to charge him for the crimes.



Love and Honor
6

When a young soldier in Vietnam gets dumped by his hometown girl, he and his best friend decide to go AWOL and return to the States to win her back.



Boy Culture
6.3

A successful gay male escort describes in a series of confessions his tangled romantic relationships with his two roommates and an older, enigmatic male client.



R
R(2010)
6.8

The R of the title stands for the young protagonist, Rune, fearlessly played by Pilou Asbæk. Imprisoned for violent assault, he's a cocky, good-looking young man placed in the hardcore ward, where his survival depends on quickly learning the prison's parallel world of rules, honor, and obligations. R also stands for Rachid, a young Muslim prisoner who becomes Rune's friend and accomplice, defying the rigid racial stratifications among the inmates.



Valley of the Wolves: Iraq

The film covers through fiction real-life events like the occupation of Iraq, the execution of Daniel Pearl, the Hood event and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.



Brothers
Brothers(2009)
7.3

When his helicopter goes down during his fourth tour of duty in Afghanistan, Marine Sam Cahill is presumed dead. Back home, brother Tommy steps in to look over Sam’s wife, Grace, and two children. Sam’s surprise homecoming triggers domestic mayhem.



Holes
Holes(2003)
6.9

After being wrongfully convicted for stealing a pair of shoes, Stanley Yelnats is sent away to Camp Green Lake, a boys detention facility where inmates are forced to dig holes all day in the hot desert sun as a form of character building. But Stanley and the other boys start to unravel a mystery, linked with the camps tough-as-nails warden —and possibly Stanley’s family itself.



Stop-Loss
Stop-Loss(2008)
6.137

A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty by the Army.



Toy Soldiers
6.497

After federal agents arrest a drug czar and put him on trial, the cartel leader's vicious son storms a prep school and takes its students hostage. They rebel against the armed intruders and try to take back their academy by any means necessary.



The Brotherhood of Justice

High-school students start a vigilante group in their neighbourhood but, as their power increases, they become more abusive and dangerous.



Manjummel Boys
7.814

Manjummel Boys, based on a real story, is about a bunch of friends who set out on a trip to Kodaikanal and the events that occur there.



Traitor
Traitor(2008)
6.7

When straight arrow FBI agent Roy Clayton heads up the investigation into a dangerous international conspiracy, all clues seem to lead back to former U.S. Special Operations officer Samir Horn.



The Great Raid
6.522

As World War II rages, the elite Sixth Ranger Battalion is given a mission of heroic proportions: push 30 miles behind enemy lines and liberate over 500 American prisoners of war.



Paradise Now
6.874

Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.



The Son of No One
5.1

A rookie cop is assigned to the 118 Precinct in the same district where he grew up. The Precinct Captain starts receiving letters about two unsolved murders that happened many years ago in the housing projects when the rookie cop was just a kid. These letters bring back bad memories and old secrets that begin to threaten his career and break up his family.



AKA
AKA(2023)
6.873

A steely special ops agent finds his morality put to the test when he infiltrates a crime syndicate and unexpectedly bonds with the boss' young son.



Snowden
Snowden(2016)
7.105

CIA employee Edward Snowden leaks thousands of classified documents to the press.



Tears of the Sun
6.9

Navy SEAL Lieutenant A.K. Waters and his elite squadron of tactical specialists are forced to choose between their duty and their humanity, between following orders by ignoring the conflict that surrounds them, or finding the courage to follow their conscience and protect a group of innocent refugees. When the democratic government of Nigeria collapses and the country is taken over by a ruthless military dictator, Waters, a fiercely loyal and hardened veteran is dispatched on a routine mission to retrieve a Doctors Without Borders physician.



Jamesy Boy
6.404

Based on the true story of teenager James Burns who goes from a suburban street gang to a maximum-security prison cell surrounded by hardened criminals. He turns his life around in prison thanks to the unexpected friendship he forms with a convicted murderer who becomes his mentor.



My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Brad has committed murder and barricaded himself inside his house. With the help of his friends and neighbours, the cops piece together the strange tale of how this nice young man arrived at such a dark place.



The Devil's Own
6.2

Frankie McGuire, one of the IRA's deadliest assassins, draws an American family into the crossfire of terrorism. But when he is sent to the U.S. to buy weapons, Frankie is housed with the family of Tom O'Meara, a New York cop who knows nothing about Frankie's real identity. Their surprising friendship, and Tom's growing suspicions, forces Frankie to choose between the promise of peace or a lifetime of murder.



Home of the Brave
5.4

The day after they get the word they'll go home in two weeks, a group of soldiers from Spokane are ambushed in an Iraqi city. Back stateside we follow four of them - a surgeon who saw too much, a teacher who's a single mom and who lost a hand in the ambush, an infantry man whose best friend died that day, and a soldier who keeps reliving the moment he killed a civilian woman.



November Criminals
5.3

When Addison investigates the murder of his friend Kevin with the help of Phoebe, they discover that the truth is darker than they had ever imagined.



13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

An American Ambassador is killed during an attack at a U.S. compound in Libya as a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.



Brothers
Brothers(2004)
6.729

A Danish officer, Michael, is sent away to the International Security Assistance Force operation in Afghanistan for three months. His first mission there is to find a young radar technician who had been separated from his squad some days earlier. While on the search, his helicopter is shot down and he is taken as a prisoner of war, but is reported dead to the family.



Drone
Drone(2017)
5.329

Ideologies collide with fatal results when a military drone contractor meets an enigmatic Pakistani businessman.



Boy Erased
7

Jared, the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, is outed to his parents at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a gay conversion therapy program – or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith.



This Special Friendship

A tale of the tender relationship between a twelve-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old upperclassman who is the object of his desire, all set within the rigid atmosphere of a Jesuit-run school.



The Guard
The Guard(2011)
6.985

When a small-town Irish cop with a crass personality is partnered with a straight-laced FBI agent to bust an international drug-trafficking ring, they must settle their differences in order to take down a dangerous gang.



Kajaki
Kajaki(2014)
6.612

British soldiers guarding the Kajaki Dam set out to rescue a three-man team after one of them loses a leg to a landmine.



Cahill: United States Marshal

J.D. Cahill is the toughest U.S. Marshal they've got, just the sound of his name makes bad guys stop in their tracks, so when his two young boy's want to get his attention they decide to rob a bank. They end up getting more than they bargained for.



The East
The East(2021)
5.9

A young Dutch soldier deployed to suppress post-WWII independence efforts in the Netherlands’ colony of Indonesia finds himself torn between duty and conscience when he joins an increasingly ruthless commander’s elite squad.



L.I.E.
L.I.E.(2001)
6.8

With his mother dead and his father busy at work, Howie feels adrift in his New York suburb. He and his friend Gary spend their time burglarizing their neighbors' homes — until they make the mistake of robbing the house of Big John, a macho former Marine who is also an unrepentant pedophile. He propositions Howie, who declines, but the two eventually develop an unlikely and dangerous friendship.



In a Better World
7.1

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.



Compulsion
7.1

Two close friends' plan to execute a flawless crime is crushed when one of them inadvertently leaves his glasses at the crime scene.



Boy A
Boy A(2008)
7.109

Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.



Soldier of Orange
7.03

The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.



Across the Hall
5.901

Convinced that his fiancee is cheating on him, a man follows her to a hotel and calls his best friend to help him avoid a calamity.



Shock and Awe
6.332

A group of journalists covering George Bush's planned invasion of Iraq in 2003 are skeptical of the presidents claim that Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction."



Felon
Felon(2008)
7.1

A family man convicted of killing an intruder must cope with life afterward in the violent penal system.



The Last Detail
7

Two Navy men are ordered to bring a young offender to prison, but decide to show him one last good time along the way.



The Guilty
6.427

A demoted police officer assigned to a call dispatch desk is conflicted when he receives an emergency phone call from a kidnapped woman.



Linewatch
Linewatch(2008)
5.3

Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a Border Patrol Officer in the New Mexico desert with a secret past that is about to catch up with him. When his old gang leader tracks him down and forces him to smuggle drugs across the border, he must choose between the life he swore to leave behind and saving his family at any cost.



No Man's Land
7.481

Two soldiers from opposite sides get stuck between the front lines in the same trench. The UN is asked to free them and both sides agree on a ceasefire, but will they stick to it?



Good
Good(2008)
6.1

When John Halder's latest novel is enlisted by powerful political figures in the Nazi party to push their agenda, his career and social standing instantly advance. But after learning of the Reich's horrific plans for the future and the devastating effects they will have on people close to him, John must decide whether or not to take a stand and risk losing everything.



Jarhead
Jarhead(2005)
6.673

Jarhead is a film about a US Marine Anthony Swofford’s experience in the Gulf War. After putting up with an arduous boot camp, Swofford and his unit are sent to the Persian Gulf where they are eager to fight, but are forced to stay back from the action. Swofford struggles with the possibility of his girlfriend cheating on him, and as his mental state deteriorates, his desire to kill increases.



The Secret Life of Words

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.



Brokedown Palace
6.4

Best friends Alice and Darlene take a trip to Thailand after graduating high school. In Thailand, they meet a captivating Australian man, who calls himself Nick Parks. Darlene is particularly smitten with Nick and convinces Alice to take Nick up on his offer to treat the two of them to what amounts to a day trip to Hong Kong. In the airport, the girls are seized by the police and shocked to discover that one of their bags contains heroin.



Ghosts of War
6.3

A group of World War II American soldiers encounter a supernatural enemy as they occupy a French castle previously under Nazi control.



9th Company
6.703

Russian army recruits complete training and take their posting in late 1980s Afghanistan, where the insurgents are slowly gaining the upper hand.



Omar
Omar(2013)
7.1

The drama, the story of three childhood friends and a young woman who are torn apart in their fight for freedom, is billed as the first fully-financed film to come out of the Palestinian cinema industry.



Mine
Mine(2016)
6.589

After a failed assassination attempt, a soldier finds himself stranded in the desert. Exposed to the elements, he must survive the dangers of the desert and battle the psychological and physical toll of the treacherous conditions.



The Codes of War
6.2

War stories about family, ethics and honor include the true story of two U.S. Marines who in a span of six seconds, must stand their ground to stop a suicide truck bomb, a Navy Corpsman who attempts to hold on to his humanity, and a WW2 soldier who gets separated from his squad and is forced to re-evaluate his code.



Black Site
6.1

A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.



The Good Son
6.775

A young boy stays with his aunt and uncle, and befriends his cousin who's the same age. But his cousin begins showing increasing signs of psychotic behavior.



7 Prisoners
7.1

An impoverished teen seeking to escape the clutches of a human trafficker must weigh living up to his moral code against his struggle to survive.



Seven Days War
6.494

In the town of Saima, when summer is about to begin, a group of six high school students intend to live a secret adventure by spending seven carefree days in a ruined mining facility.



The Manhattan Project
6.154

A gifted high school student steals plutonium from the secret nuclear weapons facility in his home town in order to construct his own nuclear bomb, win a national science fair, and expose the government's secrets.



To End All War: Oppenheimer & the Atomic Bomb

Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.



Crimes and Misdemeanors

A renowned ophthalmologist is desperate to cut off an adulterous relationship…which ends up in murder; and a frustrated documentary filmmaker woos an attractive television producer while making a film about her insufferably self-centered boss.



Infiltration
7.5

Ivan sets off on a dangerous mission into Syria to save his ex-commander Grey after his capture by ISIS. With the help of U.S. military patrols, he succeeds in freeing Grey and attempts to escape the country while being hunted by terrorists.

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