The Best R-Rated Drama Movies

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Updated April 25, 2024 28 items
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List of R-rated drama movies, ranked from best to worst with movie trailers when available. This list takes the best R drama movies and pits them against each other to see once and for all what the greatest R drama movie of all time is.

This list of popular R drama movies includes information like who directed the film, when it was released, and which actors starred in the movie. If you think the top R drama movie isn't as high as it should be then be sure to vote it up so it can take its rightful place among the other great R drama films on this list. If you're trying to find a specific R drama film, you can search this list and filter to find what you're looking for.Examples include Secrets & Lies and Shiri.

 If you're trying to find out "What are the best R drama movies?" and "What are the most famous R drama movies?" then this list is the perfect resource for you. Use this list if you're looking for some new drama movies that are rated R. Between Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other services there are thousands of great rated R dramas, so get out there and start watching. Re-rank this thing so that the order fits your opinions, then make it votable and share it with your social network. {#nodes}

If you haven't done so already, be sure to also check out Historical Drama Movies, Family Drama Movies, and Best P-13 Drama Movies.

Ingmar Bergman and Mike Leigh are among the directors that have worked on a Drama R film.

Latest additions: Challengers, Strictly Confidential, The Tearsmith
Help shape these rankings by voting on this list of The Best R-Rated Drama Movies
  • The Godfather
    1

    The Godfather

    Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan
    10 votes
    The Godfather, a celebrated crime-drama, presents an intimate study of the Corleone family. At its core is Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), initially an outsider, who gets reluctantly drawn into the family's criminal enterprises. His father, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), is the patriarch, whose power and influence cast long shadows over his family's affairs. The movie paints a vivid tableau of post-war New York's underworld, riddled with betrayal and power struggles. This cinematic masterpiece, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, swept the 1973 Academy Awards winning Best Picture amongst others.
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  • Lucía y el sexo
    2

    Lucía y el sexo

    Paz Vega, Elena Anaya, Najwa Nimri
    8 votes
    Sex and Lucia (aka Lucia y el Sexo) is a 2001 Spanish drama film written and directed by Julio Médem, and starring Paz Vega and Tristán Ulloa. As suggested by the title, there is a great deal of passionate sexual content surrounding the love story of Lucía and Lorenzo as the plot dissolves into a very lyrical eroticism. The movie features a highly non-linear story line with repeated surreal references to the ocean and beach. The plot depicts the tragic stories that connect all of the film's characters. The film was shot on two separate locations along the Mediterranean coast in Spain and France.
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  • The Godfather Part II
    3

    The Godfather Part II

    Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton
    8 votes
    In the mesmerizing sequel, The Godfather Part II, we plunge deeper into the Corleone saga. This time, the narrative oscillates between two compelling timelines. In one, we follow a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) as he navigates the gritty underworld of early 20th century New York. The parallel story presents an older Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), grappling with the family business's expanding empire and his own moral quandaries. A crime drama masterpiece, this film bagged six Academy Awards including Best Picture, affirming its cinematic legacy.
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  • Challengers
    4

    Challengers

    Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist
    3 votes
    Tashi, a tennis player turned coach, has transformed her husband from a mediocre player into a world-famous grand slam champion. To jolt him out of his recent losing streak, she makes him play a challenger event -- close to the lowest level of tournament on the pro tour. Tensions soon run high when he finds himself standing across the net from the once-promising, now burnt-out Patrick, his former best friend and Tashi's former boyfriend.
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  • Secrets & Lies
    5

    Secrets & Lies

    Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Phyllis Logan
    7 votes
    After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a successful black eye doctor, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to a lower-class white woman, Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn). At first Cynthia denies the claim, but she eventually admits to birthing Hortense as a teenager, and the two begin to bond. However, when Cynthia invites Hortense to a family barbecue, Cynthia's already tense relationship with her family becomes even more complicated.
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  • Sin Nombre
    6

    Sin Nombre

    Hector Jimenez, Diana Garcia, Tenoch Huerta
    7 votes
    Sin Nombre is a 2009 Mexican-American adventure thriller film written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, about a Honduran girl trying to immigrate to the U.S.A., and a boy caught up in the violence of gang life who also needs to escape. Filmed in Spanish, the film's title means "Nameless". It won several awards, including the prizes for directing and cinematography at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
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  • Phantom Thread
    7

    Phantom Thread

    Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville
    7 votes
    Renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock and his sister Cyril are at the center of British fashion in 1950s London -- dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites and debutantes. Women come and go in Woodcock's life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship. His carefully tailored existence soon gets disrupted by Alma, a young and strong-willed woman who becomes his muse and lover.
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  • Sergio
    8

    Sergio

    Wagner Moura, Ana de Armas, Brían F. O'Byrne
    3 votes
    Sergio is a 2020 American biographical drama film directed by Greg Barker. Top UN diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello (Wagner Moura) hangs in the balance during the most treacherous mission of his career which takes place during the chaotic aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq.
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  • You Should Have Left
    9

    You Should Have Left

    Kevin Bacon, Amanda Seyfried, Colin Blumenau
    2 votes
    Strange events plague a couple and their young daughter when they rent a secluded countryside house that has a dark past.
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  • The Outpost
    10

    The Outpost

    Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones, Orlando Bloom
    2 votes
    A small unit of U.S. soldiers, alone at the remote Combat Outpost Keating, located deep in the valley of three mountains in Afghanistan, battles an overwhelming force of Taliban fighters in a coordinated attack. The Battle of Kamdesh became the bloodiest American engagement of the Afghanistan War in 2009, and Bravo Troop 3-61 CAV became one of the most decorated units of the 19-year conflict.
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  • All Day and a Night
    11

    All Day and a Night

    Ashton Sanders, Jeffrey Wright, Isaiah John
    2 votes
    All Day and a Night is a 2020 American drama film directed by Joe Robert Cole. After a young criminal, Jahkor Abraham Lincoln (Ashton Sanders), arrives in prison, he takes a look at his past and the circumstances before his arrest to help him determine a way forward.
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  • Capone
    12

    Capone

    Tom Hardy, Linda Cardellini, Noel Fisher
    2 votes
    Chronicling the final days of notorious gangster Al Capone as he succumbs to dementia and relives his past through tormenting memories.
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  • The Roads Not Taken
    13

    The Roads Not Taken

    Javier Bardem, Ellie Fanning, Laura Linney< Salma Hayek
    2 votes
    The Roads Not Taken is a 2020 British-American drama film directed by Sally Potter. Leo (Javier Bardem) and his daughter, Molly (Elle Fanning) grapple with the challenges of Leo's chaotic mind as Leo begins to experience alternate lives he could have lived, causing Molly to wrestle with her own path as she considers her future.
  • I'm Thinking of Ending Things
    14

    I'm Thinking of Ending Things

    Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette
    2 votes
    Full of misgivings, a young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents' secluded farm.
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  • True History of the Kelly Gang
    15

    True History of the Kelly Gang

    George MacKay, Essie Davis, Nicholas Hoult
    2 votes
    True History of the Kelly Gang is a 2020 British-Australian biographical western film directed by Justin Kurzel and is based off the novel by the same name. It is the story of an Australian bushrangler, Ned Kelly (George MacKay) and his gang as they flee from authorities during the 1870s.
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  • Resistance
    16

    Resistance

    Jesse Eisenberg, Ed Harris, Edgar Ramírez
    2 votes
    Before he becomes world-famous mime Marcel Marceau, aspiring Jewish actor Marcel Mangel joins the French Resistance to save thousands of orphaned children from the Nazis.
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  • Saraband
    17

    Saraband

    Erland Josephson, Liv Ullmann, Börje Ahlstedt
    5 votes
    Following Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullmann) 30 years after the events of "Scenes from a Marriage," this sequel finds the couple long since divorced and remarried. After Johan separates from his second wife, and Marianne loses her second husband, the ex-lovers try to reconnect. Meanwhile, Johan's son, Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt), is having problems of his own with his daughter, Karin (Julia Dufvenius), a cellist whose career plans don't match her father's expectations.
  • Separate Lies
    18

    Separate Lies

    Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, Rupert Everett
    5 votes
    James Manning (Tom Wilkinson), a successful business lawyer, and his younger wife, Anne (Emily Watson), split time between a London apartment and a lush country estate. The couple's seemingly perfect marriage gets complicated when their handsome and wealthy neighbor, Bill (Rupert Everett), returns to town and Anne begins sleeping with him. After Bill and Anne are linked to a hit-and-run death, James, aware of the affair, must choose whether to protect his wife or come forward to the police.
  • Solomon & Gaenor
    19

    Solomon & Gaenor

    Ioan Gruffudd, Nia Roberts, Sue Jones-Davies
    4 votes
    "Solomon and Gaenor" tells the moving and passionate story of illicit love between a Welsh girl and a Jewish boy. Gaenor, born into a family of strict chapel-goers, falls for Solomon, a young door-to-door salesman, who conceals his Jewish identity from Gaenor and her family. The couple, from similar yet very distinctive worlds, fall helplessly in love. The odds are against them, however, as the outraged community in which they live conspires to destroy their fragile happiness.
  • Small Faces
    20

    Small Faces

    Clare Higgins, Iain Robertson, Ian McElhinney
    4 votes
    To the dismay of his mother, Lex Maclean (Iain Robertson) finds trouble when he and his older brother, Bobby (J.S. Duffy), a member of the Glens, a street gang, accidentally injure Malky Johnson (Kevin McKidd), the leader of a rival gang, the Tongs. Already jealous that Lex's other brother, Alan (Joseph McFadden), is wooing local beauty Joanne (Laura Fraser), Malky rages over the incident, setting off a battle that threatens Lex's plans to leave the neighborhood and go to art school.
  • The Sidehackers
    21

    The Sidehackers

    Goldie Hawn, Ross Hagen, Michael Pataki
    4 votes
    The Sidehackers is a 1969 action film about motorcycle racing with a twist. Each motorcycle has a sidehack, in which a passenger rides and tilts to one side or another when going around curves. The credits thank the "Southern California Sidehack Association"; sidehacking is also known as sidecarcross or "sidecar motocross racing".
  • Shiri
    22

    Shiri

    Yunjin Kim, Song Kang-Ho, Choi Min-sik
    4 votes
    Shiri is a 1999 South Korean action film, written and directed by Kang Je-gyu. Swiri was the first Hollywood-style big-budget blockbuster to be produced in the "new" Korean film industry. Created as a deliberate homage to the "high-octane" action film made popular by Hollywood through 1980s, it also contained a story that draws on strong Korean national sentiment to fuel its drama. Much of the film's visual style shares that of the Asian action cinema, and particularly Hong Kong action cinema, of John Woo, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and the relentless pace of the second unit directors, like Vic Armstrong and Guy Hamilton, in the James Bond films. The movie was released under the name Shiri outside of South Korea; in Korea, the title was spelled Swiri. The name refers to Coreoleuciscus splendidus, a fish found in Korean fresh-water streams. At one point Park has a monologue wherein he describes how the waters from both North and South Korea flow freely together, and how the fish can be found in either water without knowing which it belongs to. This ties into the film's ambitions to be the first major-release film to directly address the still-thorny issue of Korean reunification.
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  • The Tearsmith
    23

    The Tearsmith

    Caterina Ferioli, Biondo, Alessandro Bedetti
    0 votes
    Adopted together after a tough childhood in an orphanage, Nica and Rigel realize that unexpected but irresistible feelings pull them together.
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  • Strictly Confidential
    24

    Strictly Confidential

    Elizabeth Hurley, Georgia Lock, Lauren McQueen
    0 votes
    On the anniversary of Rebecca's death, Mia returns to the Caribbean paradise where she and her best friend shared her final days. As Mia sets out to unravel the mysterious events of her passing, old passions rise and new secrets are revealed as she gets pulled into a seductive world of sex, betrayal and murder.
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  • Mending the Line
    25

    Mending the Line

    Brian Cox, Sinqua Walls, Perry Mattfeld
    0 votes
    Returning to the Unites States, a wounded veteran develops a friendship with a headstrong fly fisherman and a talented photographer turned librarian.
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  • Memory
    26

    Memory

    Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Brooke Timber
    0 votes
    Social worker Sylvia's structured life is blown apart when Saul follows her home from their high school reunion. Their surprise encounter profoundly impacts both of them as they open the door to the past.
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  • Son of the Bride
    27

    Son of the Bride

    Ricardo Darín, Héctor Alterio, Norma Aleandro
    4 votes
    Son of the Bride is a 2001 Argentine comedy drama film directed by Juan José Campanella and written by Campanella and Fernando Castets. The executive producers were Juan Vera and Juan Pablo Galli, and it was produced by Adrián Suar. It stars Ricardo Darín, Héctor Alterio, Norma Aleandro, Eduardo Blanco and Natalia Verbeke. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and won the Silver Condor for Best Film.
  • Intimate Relations
    28

    Intimate Relations

    Julie Walters, Rupert Graves, Laura Sadler
    4 votes
    In 1950s England, sailor Harold Guppy (Rupert Graves) arrives in a small seaside town looking for his estranged brother. After a brief reunion, Harold finds a room for rent in the house of Mrs. Beasley (Julie Walters), her meek husband and their teenage daughter, Joyce (Laura Sadler). It's clear that Harold has a troubled past, but his future is about to get more perilous yet. Despite the rosy surface, Harold soon finds himself in a tawdry sexual tug-of-war that won't end well.