Highest-Rated Movies about 'Abuse'

The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains (1987), The Unloved (2009), Stevie (2002), Mouchette (1967), Affliction (1997), Fanny and Alexander (1982), Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief (2015), Once Were Warriors (1994) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Abuse movies.

#1. The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains (1987)

Storyline: Jobless and desperate, World War I veteran Robert Eliot Burns (Val Kilmer) is arrested for theft and sentenced to work on a prison chain gang. Eager to get away from brutal Warden Hardy (Charles Durning), Burns busts out of jail. Suddenly free, he woos foxy stranger Emily Del Pino Pacheco (Sonia Braga). Soon, though, the romance sours, and, without cover from Emily, Burns is left with nowhere to hide. To his dismay, he might just find himself making a return journey to Hardy's chain gang.

Plot Keywords: biography, drama, crime, history, prison, true story, social injustice ...

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#2. The Unloved (2009)

Storyline: Lucy is 11-years-old and lives with her father. One day, not for the first time, he beats her. The next time she returns to school, Lucy asks to see her social worker Jackie. Lucy is known to social services and has been in foster care before, but none of her foster parents have any placements available. Jackie takes her to a children's home, Crop Row, where she is left with nothing except the school uniform she is wearing.

Plot Keywords: drama, british, social issues, children, family, loneliness, abuse ...

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#3. Stevie (2002)

Storyline: After not seeing his younger friend for several years, documentary director Steve James decides to catch up with the Illinois boy he once mentored. No longer the nerdy preteen James once knew, Stephen Fielding is now a damaged adult who has had repeated problems with the law. While reproaching himself for not maintaining a closer relationship with his old friend, James tries to understand Fielding's evolution from abused child to a man convicted of serious crimes.

Plot Keywords: documentary, biography, crime, social issues, poverty, family, childhood ...

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#4. Mouchette (1967)

Storyline: Young teen Mouchette (Nadine Nortier) faces hardships everywhere in her difficult life. Her father (Paul Hébert) is a cruel drunk who neglects her. Meanwhile, her mother (Marie Cardinal) lies ill, slowly dying. One day, fleeing a rainstorm, Mouchette comes across Arsène (Jean-Claude Guilbert), a poacher with a violent streak. He lets her take shelter in his cabin but then assaults her. Arsène even blackmails Mouchette to involve her in a cover-up for a crime he's committed.

Plot Keywords: french film, drama, black and white, 1960s, social marginalization, poverty, rural life ...

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#6. Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Storyline: It's the early twentieth century Sweden. Adolescent siblings Alexander and Fanny Ekdahl lead a relatively joyous and exuberant life with their well-off extended paternal family, led by the family matriarch, their grandmother, Helena Ekdahl. The openness of the family culture is exemplified by Helena's now deceased husband ending up becoming best friends with one of her lovers, a Jewish puppet maker named Isak Jacobi, and their Uncle Gustav Adolf's open liaison with one of the family maids, Maj, who everyone in the family adores, even Gustav Adolf's wife, Alma. Between the siblings, Alexander in particular has inherited the family's love of storytelling, his parents and his grandmother who are actors and who manage their own theater. Things change for Alexander and Fanny when their father, Oscar, dies shortly after Christmas 1907. Although she truly does believe she loves him, the children's mother, Emilie, decides to marry Bishop Edvard Vergérus, who she first met as the officiate at ...

Plot Keywords: family, drama, historical, swedish, childhood, fantasy, religion ...

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#7. Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief (2015)

Storyline: A devastating two hour documentary based on Lawrence Wright's book of the same name. Scientology is laid bare by a film that skilfully knits together archive footage, testimonials from former high ranking officials and public, and dramatic reconstructions.

Plot Keywords: documentary, belief, religion, investigation, exposé, controversy, brainwashing ...

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#8. Once Were Warriors (1994)

Storyline: Set in urban Auckland (New Zealand) this movie tells the story of the Heke family. Jake Heke is a violent man who beats his wife frequently when drunk, and yet obviously loves both her and his family. The movie follows a period of several weeks in the family's life showing Jake's frequent outburst of violence and the effect that this has on his family. The youngest son is in trouble with the police and may be put into a foster home while the elder son is about to join a street gang. Jake's daughter has her own serious problems which are a key element in the plot.

Plot Keywords: violence, family, poverty, alcoholism, abuse, social issues, new zealand ...

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#9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Storyline: Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle suspects murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history; but, the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

Plot Keywords: crime, mystery, thriller, drama, swedish, adaptation, novel ...

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#10. The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

Storyline: A thoroughly mind-provoking film about 3 young women who, under tragic circumstances, see themselves cast away to a Magdalene Asylum for young women in 1964. One of many like institutions, the asylums are run like prisons and young girls are forced to do workhouse laundry and hard labor. The asylum, one of many that existed in theocratic Catholic Ireland, is for supposedly 'fallen' women. Here, young girls are imprisoned indefinitely and endure agonizing punishments and a long, harsh working system which leaves them physically drained and mentally damaged. As the girls bond together, it soon becomes clear that the only way out of the Magdalene convent is to escape, but with twisted Sister Bridget running the wing, any chances seem limited...

Plot Keywords: drama, history, women, religion, abuse, ireland, oppression ...

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#11. Song for a Raggy Boy (2003)

Storyline: In 1939 William Franklin, an anti-Franco veteran of the bloody Spanish Civil War, arrives as first-ever lay teacher in a strict Catholic Reformatory and Industrial School for wayward boys. He soon learns the academic challenge is formidable, many boys being still illiterate, but gradually earns their trust, respect, in time almost devotion, with 'paternal' kindness, making the layman the opposite of the cruel prefect, brother John, who frequently administers painful and humiliating punishments, even the gentle, old superior Father Damian has no authority against his disciplinary mandate from the grim bishop Conlon. Slowly even class rebel Liam Mercier is turned around, trough his gift for literature. After Franklin dares stop the sadist's penny-weighted strap severely striking 'sinful scum' for a futility, the whole dorm is treated to an icy night outdoors, arms outstretched wearing only shorts. Brother Mac's mind may mean to educate well, his flesh is too weak for celibacy, so the coy, pretty new boy becomes his latest pederastic lust-object, sworn to suffer sodomy in silence- even devoutly confessing to Father O'Driscoll his fear to have lost his innocence during painful rape costs him an endless cold shower, shivering stark-naked before his tormentor. Constructing a nativity stall for the village church allows Franklin's class to grow close, have fun and earn praise, but after the Peters brothers cross the forbidden red lines to hug each-other on Christmas night across the wall separating the age sections, John punishes their 'blasphemous abomination' (?!) by publicly flogging their bare backs to bloody pulp till Franklin arrives. Still the prefect is capable of viler abuse: Liam, who sent a boy to get Franklin and received a book with dedication from that 'communist', privately gets the sturdy strap in the face till even secret-blackmailed brother Mac can't watch the orgy of child-abuse any more, but now Franklin arrives so late...—KGF Vissers

Plot Keywords: historical, drama, school, abuse, reform, teacher, students ...

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#12. Tyrannosaur (2011)

Storyline: The story of Joseph, a man plagued by violence and a rage that is driving him to self-destruction. As Joseph's life spirals into turmoil, a chance at redemption appears in the form of Hannah, a Christian charity shop worker. Their relationship develops to reveal that Hannah is hiding a secret of her own with devastating consequences to both of their lives.

Plot Keywords: violence, drama, british film, underclass, anger, redemption, loneliness ...

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#13. Sleepers (1996)

Storyline: As children, Lorenzo Carcaterra - Shakes to his friends - Michael Sullivan, Tommy Marcano, and John Reilly were inseparable. They grew up in Hell's Kitchen, a far from perfect neighborhood, one filled as Shakes says with scams and shake downs, but one where the rules were known by its residents. The one adult who they admired was Father Bobby Carelli, who understood them as kids more than most adults and more than he himself would like to admit. In 1967, their lives would change forever when a typical teenage prank went wrong which led to the four of them being sentenced to various terms at Wilkinson Home for Boys, a reformatory. There, they were physically, emotionally and sexually abused primarily by Sean Nokes, the head guard of their cell block, and fellow guards Ralph Ferguson, Henry Addison, and Adam Styler, although there were other caring figures of authority at the home including other guards. Their time at the home affected the four, not all who were able to emerge from the ...

Plot Keywords: crime, drama, thriller, revenge, legal, prison, childhood trauma ...

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#14. The Piano Teacher (2001)

Storyline: Erika Kohut is a pianist, teaching music. Schubert and Schumann are her forte, but she's not quite at concert level. She's approaching middle age, living with her mother who is domineering then submissive; Erika is a victim then combative. With her students she is severe. She visits a sex shop to watch DVDs; she walks a drive-in theater to stare at couples having sex. Walter is a self-assured student with some musical talent; he auditions for her class and is forthright in his attraction to her. She responds coldly then demands he let her lead. Next she changes the game with a letter, inviting him into her fantasies. How will he respond; how does sex have power over our other faculties?

Plot Keywords: drama, psychological, music, teacher-student relationship, repression, erotic, violence ...

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#15. Dolores Claiborne (1995)

Storyline: Dolores Claiborne works as a maid for a wealthy woman in remote Maine. When she is indicted for the elderly woman's murder, Dolores' daughter Selena returns from New York, where she has become a big-shot reporter. In the course of working out the details of what has happened, as well as some shady questions from the past and Selena's troubled childhood, many difficult truths are revealed about their family's domestic strife. This is cleverly portrayed with present reality shot in cool blue tones blending seamlessly into flashbacks shot in vivid color. As small town justice relentlessly grinds forward, surprises lie in store for the viewers....

Plot Keywords: thriller, drama, crime, family, psychological, murder, investigation ...

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