10 Most Exciting Drama Movies of All Time, Ranked

2 days ago 6

Miles Teller screaming while sitting behind a drumset in Whiplash (2014)

Published Feb 9, 2026, 8:51 AM EST

Jeremy has more than 2300 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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Action movies are exciting, and so are most thrillers, horror movies, crime films, etc. Look, there are lots of genres that showcase excitement and thrills above just about any other emotion. Dramas can be thrilling, too, though often, that’s because they tackle different genres on top of being dramas. Look at something like Hereditary, for example, which is a horror and drama hybrid, or Seven Samurai, which works as a drama and an action movie simultaneously.

With the following movies, they're principally dramas. Or, if they cross over with another genre, it’s not necessarily one of the typically exciting ones (like, there are a couple of romantic dramas here, and some biographical/historical ones, too). The following aims to showcase that just because a movie is primarily a drama, that doesn’t mean it can’t be some level of intense, exciting, or even thrilling.

Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) sits in a boardroom with a laptop in The Social Network.

There’s going to be a sequel to The Social Network, but David Fincher isn't directing it. There’s also an upcoming sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but Quentin Tarantino isn't directing it. Instead, David Fincher is. 2026 is shaping up to be another strange year.

Where were we… oh yeah, The Social Network. Follow-up aside, this is a phenomenal movie that, when released in 2010, already felt like a classic. The role Facebook has played in everyone’s lives has changed so much since the year this movie came out, but what The Social Network has to say about ambition, greed, power, and betrayal will likely keep it feeling timeless, perhaps even outliving Facebook itself, should the massive social media site (or app, whatever it wants to be called) cease to exist one day.

9 'Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters' (1985)

The ambition here is monumental, since Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters aims to adapt some of the work written by Yukio Mishima, all the while also functioning as a biopic of sorts for Mishima himself. It’s a very expressionistic and unusual biopic, though, and because it blends fiction with reality to such a great extent, you can’t really take everything here at face value.

The approach taken, though, does mean you get an undeniably compelling portrait of Yukio Mishima, and the more revolutionary qualities here ensure that Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is likely to stick in your mind to a far greater extent than most biopics. It doesn’t really feel like a drama in the traditional sense, but it’s also hard to know what other broad genre you could assign to it, beyond just going, “Eh, arthouse, I guess?”, and leaving it at that.

8 'Slumdog Millionaire' (2008)

Dev Patel as Jamal, looking surprised while confetti falls around him in Slumdog Millionaire.

Eventually, Slumdog Millionaire is a feel-good movie, but it puts its main character (and the audience, too) through a lot before it gets uplifting. It’s a movie about a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and how he’s made to tell his life story as a way of explaining just how it is he seems to know the answer to every single question he’s asked on the show.

It’s an interesting way of framing an emotionally intense story, and there’s some romance here, and maybe some crime elements, but it’s largely a drama. It’s just shot and edited in a way that makes it feel like a thriller, which is something Danny Boyle tends to be good at doing (his zombie movies, 28 Days Later and 28 Years Later, are also surprisingly energetic affairs).

7 'All That Jazz' (1979)

Roy Scheider's Joe Gideon with his arm around Jessica Lange's Angelique in All That Jazz

It wasn’t quite the final film Bob Fosse directed, but All That Jazz did feel like it could’ve been a swansong. It saw Fosse making a movie that was pretty much autobiographical, with the protagonist here being a womanizer, workaholic, and genuinely troubled individual who’s also something of a genius and very passionate… maybe too much so. It’s more a case of when he’ll be overwhelmed for good, rather than a case of “if” that'll ever happen.

It’s principally a drama because it’s so grim and character-focused, but it gets into the head of its protagonist in a way that gives the movie a pulse. He never really slows down, and so the movie rarely slows down, too. All That Jazz becomes more of a musical in its final act, in some interesting ways, but it’s easiest to define as a gritty yet engrossing (and very personal/introspective) drama.

6 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India' (2001)

Aamir Khan and Gracy Singh smiling at each other in Lagaan- Once Upon a Time in India (2001)

Perhaps it’s cheating a bit to put Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India here, since it’s a sports movie, and sports movies often get pretty exciting, but this one might well be the most exciting sports movie ever. Hyperbole? Maybe. But this is really that good, and you will care about what happens here even if you don’t love movies that approach four hours in length, nor find cricket all that interesting.

Because, yes, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India is a nearly four-hour-long movie about a very high-stakes game of cricket played back during the era of Crown rule over India. It’s got that underdog thing going for it, with the heroes being easy to root for and the villains being wonderfully unlikable, and it works so well as a crowd-pleasing drama that the lengthy runtime pretty much flies right by.

5 '12 Angry Men' (1957)

Jurors arguing in '12 Angry Men', Henry Fonda in the background, sitting down with a knife in front of him

12 Angry Men is one of those rare older movies that even lots of younger people have seemed to have seen, or are at least encouraged to see, be it because of high school, film school, or their parents. Now, getting a teenager or a young adult to watch a black-and-white movie made decades before they were born, and said movie just involves a bunch of rather old men talking in a single room for about 90 minutes… it’s a hard sell.

12 Angry Men is efficiently shot, extremely well-written, and filled with amazing performances.

But hopefully, even those youngest viewers who might well have been made to watch 12 Angry Men will likely acknowledge how strangely riveting it is. The film is efficiently shot, extremely well-written, and filled with amazing performances. It does so much with seemingly so little, and even without action or a sense of anyone physically going anywhere, the whole thing ends up being surprisingly involving, and even quite exciting in parts.

4 'Titanic' (1997)

It’s a disaster movie, and some disaster movies can be action movies at the same time, but Titanic doesn’t really feel like it fits into such a camp. It’s certainly intense, and there’s a lot of spectacle in the second half, but it’s all played for drama, over anything else. It’s not really supposed to be a fun or entertaining sort of spectacle, even if the special effects do ultimately dazzle.

When the ship’s not sinking (and, actually, at a few points when it is), Titanic is most focused on being a romantic film, and on that front, it’s also a classic. It’s broad in a way that might make it a melodrama rather than a more straightforward drama, but it works wonders in that James Cameron kind of way; one of many films of his made to appeal to just about everybody.

3 'Casablanca' (1942)

Ilsa and Rick about to kiss in Casablanca

Another undeniably romantic movie, Casablanca also dips its toes into the war genre, but you'd probably call it a romantic drama before you call it a full-on World War II movie. It takes place during that conflict, and was indeed released at a point in history when fighting was still going on, but most of the drama here relates to a pair of people who were once in love, but then found themselves separated.

They're reunited, but the world has become more complicated, and so struggles ensue regarding whether to put oneself or one’s country first. That makes Casablanca sound a bit stilted and corny, but a summary of the plot only takes this one so far; only does it so much justice. It really is one of the all-time great films, and it remains surprisingly exciting, given its age and the fact that there really isn't much action, and is instead filled with talking. But exciting and emotionally resonant talking. Quite a bit of it’s funny, too, for good measure.

2 'The Right Stuff' (1983)

The Right Stuff is a contender for the title of “most underrated movie of all time.” It got some love from critics, and a fair few Oscar nominations, but people don’t talk about it nowadays to the extent you'd expect them to. You shouldn’t be able to get anyone to shut up about this movie, really, especially since it’s somehow only gotten better as the decades have gone along.

It was out of step with many movies being made in 1983, and it still feels a bit quirky and out there when you compare it with large-scale movies being made today. No matter. It exists, it’s out there, and it’s just an almost-perfect epic that works primarily as a historical drama, but not without some comedy and a sense of adventure, too (adventuring into outer space, you know, in effect).

1 'Whiplash' (2014)

While it’s not a thriller, Whiplash is thrilling in a way that puts a good many thrillers to shame. Technically, it’s just about drumming, more specifically, one young man who wants to be a basically perfect drummer. That sounds straightforward enough, or maybe even a little boring, but you throw in one tyrannical instructor and a determination to be perfect that ends up being self-destructive, and you're left with one anxiety-inducing drama.

It’s remarkably well-made, in just about every way a movie can be, and Whiplash also benefits from having one of the most memorable (and chilling) endings in recent memory. There’s something scary and relatable here, for anyone who’s ever felt passionate about some kind of creative pursuit, but the movie being relatable is in no way an indication that the movie is also easy to watch.