Highest-Rated Movies about 'Social Injustice'

The Green Mile (1999), The Hunt (2012), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Z (1969), Metropolis (1927), V for Vendetta (2005), 12 Years a Slave (2013), A Raisin in the Sun (1961) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Social Injustice movies.

#16. Bandit Queen (1994)

Storyline: The movie tells the story of the bandit queen Phoolan Devi who was sent to prison in 1983 and got free in 1994. For five years she was prosecuted by the Indian police and turned into a legend (like a modern Robin Hood) by the Indian press. Although the press tended to make her the optimal hero with blue eyes, dark hair, being tall and beautiful she was in reality an average Indian which makes it hard for the movie to fulfill the expectations of the audience and tell the truth at the same time. Later in her life, she entered into politics and was assassinated in 2001.—Volker Boehm

Plot Keywords: nudity, female nudity, rape and revenge, public nudity, organized crime, vengeance, social injustice ...

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#17. Sounder (1972)

Storyline: The Morgans, a loving and strong family of Black sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, face a serious family crisis when the husband and father, Nathan Lee Morgan, is convicted of a petty crime and sent to a prison camp. After some weeks or months, the wife and mother, Rebecca Morgan, sends the oldest son, who is about 11 years old, to visit his father at the camp. The journey becomes something of an odyssey for the boy. During the journey, he stays a little while with a dedicated Black schoolteacher.—Ed Cannon <ecannon@mail.utexas.edu>

Plot Keywords: coming of age, family relationships, wound, traveling, social injustice, shootout, sheriff ...

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#18. The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (2004)

Storyline: This documentary presents a sobering reminder of the racial tensions that gripped America not so long ago. In Mississippi during the '50s, a black teenager named Emmett Louis Till, who is from Chicago and visiting his great-uncle, whistles at a white woman in public. Not too long afterward, he is kidnapped and murdered. The filmmakers revisit the public outrage that follows, revealing Till's family as being particularly brave for standing up to white racism when it was clearly unsafe to do so.

Plot Keywords: teenage boy, mississippi, murder, racism, 1950s, acquittal, civil rights ...

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#19. A Time to Kill (1996)

Storyline: In Canton, Mississippi, 10-year-old Tonya Hailey is viciously brutalized by two white racist rednecks -- James Louis "Pete" Willard and Billy Ray Cobb. Almost immediately after Tonya is found and rushed to a hospital, Pete and Billy Ray are found at a roadside bar, where they had been bragging about what they did to Tonya. Tonya's understandably distraught and enraged father, Carl Lee Hailey, remembers a case from a year ago, when four white men raped an African-American girl in a nearby town, and got acquitted. Carl is determined to not let that happen in this case. While deputy Dwayne Powell Looney is escorting Pete and Billy Ray up a flight of stairs to a court room, Carl emerges from the building's basement with an assault rifle, and he kills Pete and Billy Ray for what they did to Tonya. Carl is later arrested at his house by African-American sheriff Ozzie Walls, and Carl is scheduled to be placed on trial. Despite the efforts of the NAACP and local African-American leaders to ...

Plot Keywords: title spoken by character, infidelity, redemption, righteous rage, tragedy, courtroom, bigot ...

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#20. Promising Young Woman (2020)

Storyline: Pushing thirty, and defined by a hideous crime involving her bosom friend, Nina, emotionally scarred medical school dropout, Cassie, knows firsthand that some wounds never heal. Leading an uneventful existence, still living with her parents, waiting tables at a cheap coffee shop to earn a living, Cassie has found the perfect way to deal with the painful past. Dressed to kill, at night, Cassie frequents the local bars and nightclubs, pretending to be dead-drunk, utterly helpless and vulnerable. And, every week, lethally beautiful Cassie is on the prowl for all sorts of nocturnal predators and other wolves in sheep's clothing, who are unaware that, sometimes, the hunter can become the prey. Then, Ryan, a kindly and caring old classmate who is the bee's knees, enters the picture, and just like that, Cassie wants out. However, everybody knows that breaking bad habits is easier said than done. Could Ryan be the one?—Nick Riganas

Plot Keywords: revenge, female protagonist, rape and revenge, rape, gender in title, hypocrisy, title directed by female ...

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#21. Cry Freedom (1987)

Storyline: Donald Woods is chief editor of the liberal newspaper Daily Dispatch in South Africa. He has written several editorials critical of the views of Steve Biko. But after having met him for the first time, he changes his opinion. They meet several times, and this means that Woods and his family get attention from the security police. When Steve Biko dies in police custody, he writes a book about Biko. The only way to get it published is for Woods himself to illegally escape the country.

Plot Keywords: white savior, based on book, apartheid, racism, 1970s, civil rights, interracial friendship ...

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#22. X2 (2003)

Storyline: Several months have passed since the X-Men defeated Magneto and imprisoned him in a seemingly impregnable plastic chamber. One day, a mutant by the name of Nightcrawler infiltrates the White House and attempts to assassinate the President, setting off a chain reaction of anti-mutant measures by the government. Meanwhile, Logan is trying to discover his past. As scientist named William Stryker discovers Professor X's secret school and Cerebro, Magneto's partner, Mystique, is planning to break her leader out of prison. But when Professor X's school is attacked by Stryker's forces, Logan, Rogue, Iceman, and a few are lucky to escape. Those who remain meet in Boston, where they form an uneasy alliance with Magneto to stop Stryker and rescue Professor X.

Plot Keywords: superhero, claw, mind control, museum, prison escape, washington d.c., shot in the forehead ...

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#23. X-Men (2000)

Storyline: In a world where both Mutants and Humans fear each other, Marie, better known as Rogue, runs away from home and hitches a ride with another mutant, known as Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine. Professor Charles Xavier, who owns a school for young mutants, sends Storm and Cyclops to bring them back before it is too late. Magneto, who believes a war is approaching, has an evil plan in mind, and needs young Rogue to help him.

Plot Keywords: mutant, superhero, superhero team, statue of liberty, mind reading, first part, terrorist plot ...

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#24. Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

Storyline: Western Australia, 1931. Government policy includes taking half-white, half-Aboriginal children from their Aboriginal mothers and sending them a thousand miles away to what amounts to indentured servitude, "to save them from themselves." Molly, Daisy, and Grace (two sisters and a cousin who are fourteen, ten, and eight) arrive at their Gulag and promptly escape, under Molly's lead. For several days they walk north, following a fence that keeps rabbits from settlements, eluding a native tracker and the regional constabulary. Their pursuers take orders from the government's "Chief Protector of Aborigines", A.O. Neville, blinded by Anglo-Christian certainty, evolutionary world view, and conventional wisdom. Can the girls survive?

Plot Keywords: based on true story, separation from family, racism, colonialism, identity, tracker, australian aborigine ...

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#25. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Storyline: In the Victorian London, the barber Benjamin Barker is married to the gorgeous Lucy and they have a lovely child, Johanna. The beauty of Lucy attracts the attention of the corrupt Judge Turpin, who falsely accuses the barber of a crime that he did not commit and abuses Lucy later after gaining custody of her. After fifteen years in exile, Benjamin returns to London under the new identity of Sweeney Todd, seeking revenge against Turpin. He meets the widow Mrs. Lovett who is the owner of a meat pie shop who tells him that Lucy swallowed arsenic many years ago, and Turpin assigned himself tutor of Johanna. He opens a barber shop above her store, initiating a crime rampage against those who made him suffer and lose his beloved family.

Plot Keywords: razor, based on stage musical, serial killer, barbershop, throat slitting, 19th century, cannibalism ...

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#26. The Long Walk Home (1990)

Storyline: Dramatizes the events in 1955-1956 in Montgomery, Alabama, when blacks boycotted public transport because they were forced to sit at the back. Odessa works as a maid for the Thompsons, and as well as she is treated, she feels it is her duty to walk to work, even if it means she is exhausted, and gets to work late.—Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>

Plot Keywords: based on true story, 1950s, social activism, friendship, interracial friendship, race relations, racist ...

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#27. Amistad (1997)

Storyline: Amistad is the name of a slave ship travelling from Cuba to the U.S. in 1839. It is carrying a cargo of Africans who have been sold into slavery in Cuba, taken on board, and chained in the cargo hold of the ship. As the ship is crossing from Cuba to the U.S., Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), who was a tribal leader in Africa, leads a mutiny and takes over the ship. They continue to sail, hoping to find their way back to Africa. Instead, they are misdirected and when they reach the United States, they are imprisoned as runaway slaves. They don't speak a word of English, and it seems like they are doomed to die for killing their captors when an abolitionist lawyer decides to take their case, arguing that they were free citizens of another country and not slaves at all. The case finally gets to the Supreme Court, where John Quincy Adams (Sir Anthony Hopkins) makes an impassioned and eloquent plea for their release.

Plot Keywords: ship, based on true story, male frontal nudity, social injustice, race relations, passion, interracial relationship ...

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#28. Tess (1979)

Storyline: Wessex County, England during the Victorian era. Christian values dominate what are social mores. These mores and her interactions with two men play a large part in what happens in the young life of peasant girl, the shy, innocent, proper yet proud Tess Durbeyfield. The first of these men is Alec d'Urberville. After learning from a local historian that they are really descendants of the aristocratic d'Urberville family which has died out due to lack of male heirs, Tess' parents send her to a nearby mansion where they know some d'Urbervilles actually reside. This move is in order for the family to gain some benefit from their heritage. Upon her arrival at the mansion, Tess quickly learns that the family of Tess' "cousin" Alec are not true d'Urbervilles, but rather an opportunistic lot who bought the family name in order to improve their own standing in life. Tess is pulled between what she was sent to accomplish for her family against her general disdain for Alec, who will give her ...

Plot Keywords: rape, based on novel, tragedy, 19th century, social injustice, social climber, melodrama ...

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#29. Pay It Forward (2000)

Storyline: Young Trevor McKinney, troubled by his mother's alcoholism and fears of his abusive but absent father, is caught up by an intriguing assignment from his new social studies teacher, Mr. Simonet. The assignment: think of something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor conjures the notion of paying a favor not back, but forward--repaying good deeds not with payback, but with new good deeds done to three new people. Trevor's efforts to make good on his idea bring a revolution not only in the lives of himself, his mother and his physically and emotionally scarred teacher, but in those of an ever-widening circle of people completely unknown to him.

Plot Keywords: abusive husband, teacher student relationship, social injustice, drug addiction, disfigurement, charity, interview ...

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#30. Once Upon A Time... When We Were Colored (1995)

Storyline: This film relates the story of a tightly connected Afro-American community informally called Colored Town where the inhabitants live and depend on each other in a world where racist oppression is everywhere, as told by a boy called Cliff who spent his childhood there. Despite this, we see the life of the community in all its joys and sorrows, of those that live there while others decide to leave for a better life north. For those remaining, things come to a serious situation when one prominent businessman is being muscled out by a white competitor using racist intimidation. In response, the community must make the decision of whether to submit meekly like they always have, or finally fight for their rights.—Kenneth Chisholm <kchishol@execulink.com>

Plot Keywords: segregation, based on book, coming of age, racism, mississippi, prejudice, race relations ...

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