The gangster film is one of cinema's oldest and most enduring genres, producing some of the most technically accomplished and morally complex films in the medium's history. Here are the ten greatest ever made.
1. The Godfather (1972)
The greatest film ever made about power, family, and the American Dream corrupted. Brando's Don Corleone and Pacino's Michael are two of cinema's most perfectly realised characters. Gordon Willis's photography remains some of the most beautiful and meaningful in Hollywood history.
2. Goodfellas (1990)
Where The Godfather is operatic, Goodfellas is electric. Scorsese's camera is always moving, always alive to the seductive momentum of the criminal life. Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci create three men who are genuinely compelling and genuinely monstrous.
3. The Godfather Part II (1974)
The only sequel many argue equals its predecessor. The parallel structure — Michael's moral collapse in the present, Vito's rise in the past — is one of the most elegant narrative architectures in cinema.
4. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Leone's four-hour epic is a meditation on friendship, betrayal, and lost time. Robert De Niro gives perhaps the finest performance of his career. The film's use of memory and its ambiguous final reveal make it one of cinema's most haunting experiences.
5. The Departed (2006)
Scorsese's Oscar-winning remake is his most purely entertaining film since Goodfellas. Jack Nicholson's Costello is magnificent. The final twenty minutes are a breathless escalation of betrayal and violence.
6. Scarface (1983)
Al Pacino's Tony Montana is one of cinema's great monomaniacal characters — a man who wants everything and destroys himself getting it. De Palma's film is excessive in every dimension. That excess is exactly the point.
7. City of God (2002)
The story of a Rio de Janeiro favela across two decades is one of the most kinetically exciting films ever made. Based on real events and real people. Genuinely alive and genuinely urgent.
8. Miller's Crossing (1990)
The Coen Brothers' prohibition-era gangster film is their most stylistically accomplished early work — a labyrinthine story of loyalty and betrayal. The "Danny Boy" sequence is one of cinema's great set-pieces.
9. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
A three-hour film about financial criminals that never loses momentum. DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort is as compelling a monster as Scorsese has ever filmed. Dizzying, hilarious, and frequently nauseating.
10. Road to Perdition (2002)
The quietest and most emotionally restrained film on this list. Tom Hanks as a mob enforcer protecting his son. Conrad L. Hall's photography is among the finest of any film this century.
