The 30 best crime films of all time – ranked
Cinema history is crime-ridden. In 1901, a French short called Histoire d’un crime told the story of a burglar who commits murder and is sent to the guillotine. In 1903, the American short The Great Train Robbery depicted an early cinematic hold-up. And a 1906 film called The Black Hand is considered by historians to be the oldest surviving gangster film.
Gangster movies became popular after the advent of sound cinema, though the reasons were more economic. At the time of the Great Depression, newspapers told stories of celebrity criminals – or “public enemies” – such as Al Capone and John Dillinger, and films about anti-hero criminals who made it big appealed to working class and ethnic audiences. Though the violence in these gangster pictures was shocking for the time. This was before The Hays Code, which regulated the content of American movies, was properly implemented in 1934.
A century on, crime has been at the centre of some of the greatest films ever made. Our list includes gangster films, film noir, prison dramas, heist movies, police procedurals, and more. It’s worth noting that serial killers, however, have their own genre conventions, so you won’t find the likes of Seven or The Silence of the Lambs below. Here, then, are the 30 best crime movies of all time.
30. Little Caesar (1931)
The film that popularised the gangster genre and helped set the formula – also one of the greatest examples of rapid-fire, old-timey gangster speak, see.
Like so many gangster movies that came after, it’s a tale of the American dream gone dark. Caesar “Rico” Bandello (Edward G Robinson) wants to make his name – “Be somebody!” he declares – and rises from two-bit street hoodlum to the boss of Chicago’s Northside. He grabs headlines along the way, earning celebrity status. In fact, Rico’s sensational crimes, like other movie gangsters of the era, came directly from real-world headlines.
Rico is ultimately undone by his ambition and “shoot first and argue afterwards” approach to the job. His misadventures rank alongside James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931) and the original Scarface (1932) as violent pre-code gangsters that crafted the genre.
29. Infernal Affairs (2002)
Directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, this Hong Kong crime thriller is perhaps best known for its American remake: Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.
It follows two undercover operatives on either side of the war on organised crime – undercover cop Chan (Tony Leung) who infiltrates a triad gang, and a triad mole Lau (Andy Lau), who works in the upper tiers of the Hong Kong police. There’s a duality at play: both men are dangerously trapped and have a precarious hold on their true identities: Lau laps up the police adulation when he kills a triad boss (who’s actually his boss), while Chan, the good guy, comforts a dying triad henchman.
It distils all the tension and intensity of The Departed into a lean 1hr 40mins and – even if you’ve seen Scorsese’s version – still blows you away in the end.
28. Boyz n the Hood (1991)
Writer-director John Singleton’s cap-popping drama is still affecting more than 30 years on – a tale of black teenagers in Crenshaw, South Central LA, where street crime is a way of life and gunfire is traded back and forth between rival gangs – and the most influential of the early 1990s hood films.
It launched the film careers of Cuba Gooding Jr and Ice Cube, who play childhood friends Tre and Doughboy. They’re bonded by the blood of their friends – teenagers cut down by drive-by shootings – but stand at opposite ends of the stoop. Tre has the smarts to escape the hood, while the hot-tempered Doughboy is destined to succumb to everyday violence. Laurence Fishburne plays Tre’s dad – the brilliantly-named Furious – and doles out sage advice to the boyz n the hood.
27. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
The Arthur Penn-directed film has a Western spirit beneath the 1930s clobber and cars. It mythologises Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow – a pair of reprehensible armed robbers and murderers by anyone’s measure — as folk heroes taking aim at the establishment.
It’s bolstered by the charismatic pairing of Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, the former especially mesmerising as the sexually frustrated Bonnie. “I told you I wasn’t no lover boy,” admits Clyde. Instead, they get their kicks from the robberies, which all seem like a big jape until they’re shot to pieces in an ambush.
The film was controversial at the time for its violence, which looks tame all these years on — though the gunshots to the face still hit the spot.
26. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
Guy Ritchie’s debut is very much of its moment – a right cockney palaver and a perfect Brit flick for the age of laddism. It remains a hugely significant British film of that particular moment and continues to influence British films to this day – especially the straight-to-DVD geezer genre.
Nick Moran, Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, and Dexter Fletcher are a gang of low-level chancers who fall foul of East End gangster Hatchet Harry (PH Moriarty) and his henchman, Big Chris (Vinnie Jones in his film debut – quite a novelty at the time). Cue a winding plot that involves antique shooters, lots of swearing, and a heist within a heist. It’s still exceptionally funny (see the weed dealer who gets his toes blown off with a shotgun) and puts you right back into 1990s Britain.
25. The Big Sleep (1946)
This noir classic sees Humphrey Bogart play Philip Marlowe, the hardboiled private detective created by Raymond Chandler.
The story – a case of blackmail, murder, and raunchy photos – has hoodlums and gangsters though Tommy guns really aren’t needed. The film fires off names and backstory at a rat-a-tat pace, and can be near impossible to follow. But that hardly matters. The real meat of it is the innuendo-laden tension between Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s character (they married after this film was made). Bogart’s magnetism is front and centre of the film, as Philip Marlowe has a James Bond-like effect on much younger women.
He’s threatened at gunpoint regularly, but mostly opts to fire back with sharp wits and sarcasm – the man with an answer for everything.
24. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
The Coen brothers have put their spin on crime and its various subgenres elsewhere – the likes of Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No Country for Old Men. Miller’s Crossing is more of a straight-up gangster movie, but – as you’d expect – it has the gleeful deprecating humour that always brings Coen characters to life.
It follows Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), right-hand man to Irish mob boss Leo (Albert Finney). When Leo goes to war with a rival gangster over a boxing fix, Reagan plays them off against each other – mostly to relieve his gambling debts and keep himself in whiskey.
Reagan is punched and thrown about for most of the runtime – and at one point is ordered to carry out a hit that he doesn’t have the stomach for. Albert Finney, meanwhile, puts on his slippers and unleashes a magnificent Tommy gun assault.
23. A Prophet (2009)
Directed by Jacques Audiard, this French prison film is an inverse of the standard gangster story. When it begins, our antihero Malik (Tahar Rahim) is already in prison and ascends through the ranks of organised crime from behind bars.
The ascent begins after he’s forced to carry out a hit for an incarcerated Corsican mafia boss. The tension in the build-up to the hit – Malik hides a razor blade in his mouth to cut a fellow prisoner’s throat – is borderline unbearable. Malik then becomes a dogsbody for the Corsicans before building his own drugs operation on the outside.
Partly built on racial tensions between the Corsicans and Muslims, the film hammers its religious themes a touch too hard, but it also sidesteps the standard genre beats to create something distinct and occasionally difficult to watch.
22. The Usual Suspects (1995)
The best of the twisty, hyper-cool crime films that came in the wake of Tarantino’s success. And though it’s not very fashionable to praise Kevin Spacey these days, the mastery of Spacey’s performance as hobbling conman Roger “Verbal” Kint is undeniable.
Kint is one of five career criminals brought together in an ID parade – a situation masterminded by mythical crime lord, Keyser Söze, who orders them to repay a debt by carrying out a job for him. At least, that’s Kint’s version of events.
Told in flashbacks during a police interview, the film’s final reveal – that Kint’s entire story has been (probably) fabricated via details on the police notice board – became an immediate cultural touchstone. Kint swiftly limped – then strutted – into the upper echelons of film villains.
21. Mean Streets (1973)
It’s not the first film directed by Martin Scorsese, but Mean Streets is perhaps the first true “Scorsese film” – an appropriately formative depiction of low-level crime in Little Italy.
Inspired by people Scorsese knew growing up in Little Italy himself, it’s playful stuff to begin with. Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) horse around in bars and Scorsese – who already feels like an innovator at this point – drops in a pumping pop and rock soundtrack. That soon became a Scorsese signature: the ability to evoke a time and place with a fusion of visuals and music.
Charlie, the nephew of a top-ranking mafiosi, looks out for troublemaker Johnny. It’s a penance for Charlie’s sins – his Catholic guilt in action – but Johnny’s motormouth and gambling debts eventually catch up with them.
20. Double Indemnity (1944)
Directed by Billy Wilder, this is one of the great film noirs. It’s a step away from the gangster genre – more melodrama than men with Tommy guns – but the unifying element is crime. In this case, a crime of passion as Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) into murdering her husband.
Dietrichson – the definitive femme fatale (Stanwyck was Oscar-nominated for the role) – plans to trigger the double indemnity clause in her husband’s life insurance. The spell she holds over Neff is palpable, and the atmosphere sumptuous – all darkened rooms cut by shards of light. The story is told in flashback as Neff – wounded by a gunshot (and no prizes for guessing who shot him) – confesses his crime.
19. Serpico (1973)
Between Godfathers I and II, Al Pacino switched sides to play a cop. And not just any cop, but sandals-wearing bohemian Frank Serpico – the most honest man in the NYPD. The soon-to-be whistleblower doesn’t even want a free lunch in exchange for police favours – never mind the bribes his fellow officers collect.
Based on a true story, it’s a different kind of crime film. Serpico is made to feel like a criminal for refusing to partake in the corruption. As one of his colleagues says, “Who can trust a cop who don’t take money?”
Serpico is trapped by his own integrity – no one, not even the mayor, will help him cut out the corruption. It’s a rise-and-fall story about doing the right thing, pushing everyone away and risking his career before he gets shot in the face.
18. White Heat (1949)
James Cagney plays Cody Jarrett, a hardened criminal who turns himself in for a crime he didn’t commit – but only to give himself an alibi for a bigger, more serious robbery. He then breaks out of jail with help – unbeknownst to Jarrett – from an undercover police officer.
With previous gangster roles in The Public Enemy and Angels with Dirty Faces, the Raoul Walsh-directed White Heat was something of a gangster comeback for Cagney. It also feels like the last hurrah of the classic gangster cycle, encapsulated by the image of Jarrett – a psychotic, headache-plagued mummy’s boy – standing atop an about-to-explode chemical plant, yelling, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”
Indeed, no image better exemplifies the age-old concept of a movie gangster who strives to get to the top, only for it to all go up in flames.
17. Sexy Beast (2000)
A distinct pleasure of crime films is the terrifying sociopath – a character who’s only ever one wrong word away from hacking someone to death. Joe Pesci had the character type sewn up for a while. That was until Ben Kingsley – the former Gandhi, lest we forget – stormed into the Costa del Crime as potty-mouthed nutcase Don Logan.
The directorial debut of Jonathan Glazer, Sexy Beast stars Ray Winstone as retired thief Gal, who spends his days leisurely sweating in his Spanish villa. But Don Logan turns up uninvited to recruit Gal for a robbery in London – and Don won’t take no for an answer.
Tension radiates like the blistering Spanish heat and follows Gal back to London, where the actual robbery – busting through a swimming pool wall into a bank vault next door – drills hard into the nerves.
16. Touch of Evil (1958)
Orson Welles’s other Hollywood masterpiece is credited as one of the last classic noirs. It follows the aftermath of a car bomb attack on the US-Mexico border, which leads to a clash of authorities from either side: US police captain Hank Quinlan (Welles) and Mexican prosecutor Miguel Vargas (Charlton Heston). Over the course of one frantic night, Vargas accuses the prejudiced Quinlan of planting dynamite on an innocent man.
Just as with Citizen Kane, Welles’s camerawork feels almost alive – particularly in an opening crane shot that pulls you deep into the story and locale. And though Charlton Heston’s dye job doesn’t quite convince us that he’s Mexican, the film swelters with suspense. The question is whether Quinlan – an obese mess who gets hunches in his prosthetic leg – is a good cop gone bad.
15. The Godfather Part II (1974)
The first Godfather is about Michael Corleone’s moral descent as he assumes control of the Corleone family. This second film asks how low he’s willing to go. The answer, of course, is having his own brother Fredo whacked (“I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart”), though Fredo’s only crime is stupidity.
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola it’s both a sequel and a prequel that tells simultaneous stories about the rise of Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) in 1920s New York and Michael (Al Pacino) in the ‘50s trying to strengthen the empire while his personal life crumbles.
Critics were split at the time though it’s now talked about as a rare sequel that surpasses the original. It isn’t quite that good, but its best moments cut like a knife across the belly.
14. Casino (1995)
Robert De Niro plays Sam “Ace” Rothstein, who goes to Las Vegas to run a casino for the Chicago mob. Scorsese’s three-hour epic is utterly brilliant, of course, though it feels like a rerun of the Goodfellas formula: the years-long story based on real people; the multi-person narrative; and Joe Pesci with a volcanic, impulsively violent temper. Sure, it’s formulaic, but as Ace says himself, “Why mess up a good thing?”
Casino squeezes your tolerance for violence – like a head in a vice until the eye pops – and boasts the single most harrowing mob hit in cinema history when Nicky Santoro (Pesci) and his brother are clubbed to near-death with baseball bats. Scorsese shows the brutality while leaving the worst part to your imagination: the brother being buried (barely) alive.
13. Chinatown (1974)
Roman Polanski’s neo-noir deliberately evokes the classics – it’s styled as old-school Hollywood fare but wrapped around a mystery that’s grim and obscene.
Chinatown stars Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes, a scummy private investigator who specialises in taking snaps of cheating spouses then passing newsworthy scandals to tabloids. He sticks his nose in too far when he uncovers a plot of murder, stolen water, and incest. And he almost has his nose sliced off for his troubles – a moment that brings tears to the eyes even without a razor blade up your nostril.
Nicholson brings a dark humour to Gittes, who’s steered by a newfound moral compass. Faye Dunaway is magisterial at first as the widow at the centre of the mystery, but she falls apart as her traumatic past is uncovered.
12. The French Connection (1971)
William Friedkin’s Oscar-winner pretty much created the grizzled cop cliches: a gritty crime drama about an uncompromising maverick, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman), who doesn’t play by the rules. Doyle, who chases down a heroin shipment, isn’t beyond shooting a villain in the back.
The film is best remembered for its breakneck car chase, which is Popeye Doyle’s dogged pursuit in a nutshell: charging around New York colliding with everyone and everything in his way to get the job done.
Just as gripping is a Popeye tailing drug smuggler Charnier (Fernando Rey) on the subway. It’s a battle of wits as Charnier nips on and off the train, forcing Popeye to follow and reveal himself. Popeye has to wait until The French Connection II to put a bullet in him.
11. Scarface (1983)
Brian De Palma’s epic is vivid and intensely violent – the standard rise-and-fall gangster story but with its face planted in a mountain of cocaine. Indeed, the film creates a similar effect to Tony Montana’s product. It’s intense. Tony’s barely off the boat from Cuba when another hoodlum chainsaws his friend’s limbs off.
Al Pacino’s Montana doesn’t have the smarts of Michael Corleone, but his ambition outstrips every other movie gangster. “When you get the money, you get the power,” he says. His drugs empire is a cash-in on American capitalism. The world is yours indeed.
But Tony isn’t all bad. He refuses to kill kids and mourns the death of his best friend (though, to be fair, it was Tony who killed him in the first place) before going out in a blaze of coke-fuelled glory. “Say hello to my little friend!”
10. The Untouchables (1987)
Kevin Costner plays real-life prohibition lawman Eliot Ness in a not-quite-true story about the battle to put away Al Capone (Robert De Niro). Ness forms a crack team – including Sean Connery’s Irish (though Scottish-sounding) cop, Malone – and hunts down Capone’s accountant, who knows all the dirty secrets.
Ness needs to throw out the rulebook to get Capone. As Malone tells him: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.” It’s immensely satisfying when Ness resorts to cold-blooded murder, throwing one of Capone’s henchmen off a building.
De Palma adds Hitchcockian suspense to thumping set-pieces and gruesome violence (never let De Niro bring a baseball bat to dinner). A shootout staged on the steps of Chicago Union Station – killing bad guys while also stopping a runaway pram (a homage to the Soviet classic Battleship Potemkin) – is the film at its bloody, nerve-battering best.
9. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
While some film fans might place Pulp Fiction in this spot, Reservoir Dogs – Quentin Tarantino’s debut – has that once-in-a-generation rawness. It changed the structure and pace of 1990s cinema with its back-and-forth narrative and quickfire pop culture banter.
Taking inspiration from Hong Kong actioner City on Fire, it follows a crew of colour-coded thieves – including Mr White (Harvey Keitel), Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi), and Mr Orange (Tim Roth) – and the aftermath of a botched diamond heist.
They have effortless, decade-defining cool from the opening titles, strolling down the street in black suits to a ‘70s radio weekender. The biggest tune, of course, is Stuck in the Middle with You, which plays as Mr Blonde cuts off a cop’s ear. Tarantino never shows the robbery (nor the ear-slicing) and only partly reveals the men behind the code names, alluding to an underworld not fully seen but elaborated upon in Pulp Fiction.
8. The Long Good Friday (1980)
East End gangster Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) charges across London to find the culprits behind a bombing campaign – on the same day that he’s finalising a deal with the American mafia to go semi-legit. “It’s a diabolical liberty,” says Harold about the bombings – one of the many cockney-isms that became the entire basis of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and subsequent geezer films.
Written by London journalist Barrie Keeffe, The Long Good Friday is startlingly perceptive. It predicts the spirit of Thatcherism, the rejuvenation of Canary Wharf with dodgy money, and the East London Olympics.
Hoskins is magnificent as wannabe capitalist Shand, but the entrepreneurial veneer falls away when he explodes and bottles his right-hand man in the jugular. His finest moment, however, is quiet and contemplative. Captured in the final minutes, he knows he’s done for. It’s written all over his face – he’s almost impressed by the brass neck of his enemies.
7. Carlito’s Way (1993)
Stood next to Scarface, Carlito’s Way is the lesser-known gangster collaboration from Brian De Palma and Al Pacino. Its biggest weapon – far from Tony Montana’s grenade-launching assault rifle – is heart.
Pacino plays Carlito Brigante, a Puerto Rican gangster who’s released from prison and declares he’s going legit – for real. But forces beyond Carlito’s control keep dragging him back into the underworld: his crooked, coke-riled lawyer Kleinfeld (a never-better Sean Penn) and – most insidious of all – his own legendary reputation. It’s tragic, really. All Carlito wants is to escape to the Bahamas with Gail (Penelope Ann Miller).
It’s a dialled down, soulful turn from Pacino, though there are flashes of his former self when he finds himself cornered. “You think you’re big time? You’re gonna f------ die big time!” His streetwise instincts never falter, but he fails to see that for a man of his reputation, the criminal life is inescapable.
6. Rififi (1955)
This French noir was written and directed by American filmmaker Jules Dassin, who was in European exile following the Hollywood blacklist. It tells the story of master thief/grumpy Frenchman Tony le Stéphanois (Jean Servais) who – fresh out of prison – masterminds a jewellery heist worth 240 million Francs.
The real jewel of the film is its 20-minute, dialogue and music-free heist. Tony’s crew drop into the jewellers from a hole in the ceiling and crack the safe. The robbery is so meticulous, so fascinating to watch unfold, there’s a sense that you’d happily watch the hours-long operation play out in full.
There’s an inevitable downfall when a rival criminal – also Tony’s love rival – sets out to take the loot for himself, which creates a web of treachery, murder, and kidnap. By the time Tony sells the merchandise, it feels like he’s already lost. That doesn’t stop the crooks fighting to the death over the cash.
5. Heat (1995)
You can’t fail to notice how often Robert De Niro and Al Pacino appear on this list. And for good reason: they were once the kingpins of prestige crime cinema (they are, after all, Vito and Michael Corleone). Michael Mann’s Heat was sold on their first onscreen meeting – De Niro as an elusive, slickly professional bank robber and Pacino as the obsessive cop on his trail – but it’s an absolute juggernaut of a film, from top to bottom.
De Niro and Pacino’s iconic tête-à-tête is a masterclass in understatement. There’s a quiet intensity that channels the cultural heft of all their previous crime movie roles. They find a kinship in the commitment to their respective jobs, while promising to kill each other if needs be. “Brother, you are going down.” The intensity later erupts with a centrepiece bank robbery – an adrenaline-pumping shootout and escape.
4. The Godfather (1972)
Often cited as a candidate for the greatest film ever made, Francis Ford Coppola’s original Godfather is responsible for mythologising the mafia – even for actual mafiosi, who adopted the film for its glamour.
Marlon Brando’s whispering, puffy-cheeked performance as Vito Corleone, the Godfather himself, remains the archetypal mob boss. But the film belongs to Al Pacino as his son, Michael. If the Hollywood movie standard is the positive character arc – internal growth that manifests as some external victory – The Godfather is the opposite: Michael Corleone descends from war hero to mass-murdering crime boss.
The moment of his transition comes when he shoots a rival gangster and crooked cop in a restaurant – a reprisal for an attempt on his father’s life. Coppola pulls the camera closer on Michael, managing to put you in his place – you can almost feel the anxiety rising through him. A genuine masterpiece.
3. Goodfellas (1990)
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster,” says Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, just seconds after his fellow wiseguys (Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci) have knifed Billy Batts to death in a car boot.
That’s what Scorsese’s finest crime film is all about: the allure of gangster-dom (the suits, the money, the respect, the satisfaction of pistol-whipping an odious neighbour) but penetrated by a dark, violent reality – the consequences of a life of crime. Not least of all is the threat of being suddenly whacked by your supposed “family” for becoming an inconvenience or for buying your wife a fur coat.
Based on the true story of Henry Hill – who went from mobster to paranoid coke trafficker and informant – it’s a swirling plunge into the world of the mafia. Liotta plays Henry Hill as a mafia everyman while Scorsese racks up instantly iconic scenes (“Funny how?”) and creates the go-to framework for rise-and-fall epics.
2. Get Carter (1971)
When it comes to manly, iconic, nails-hard gangsters, Jack Carter just can’t be beaten: a sharply suited Michael Caine as Carter, his hair immaculate, swanning around Newcastle to avenge his brother’s murder, hitting the local villains with well-deserved violence and putdowns. “You’re a big man but you’re out of shape,” he tells Alf Roberts from Coronation Street – then sticks a one-two on his wobbly chin. Still, it could be worse: Jack throws him off a multistorey car park later in the film.
Written and directed by Mike Hodges – from a book by Ted Lewis – Get Carter is at once unrelentingly bleak, deliciously seedy and supremely hip. All of which is felt in the bass of Roy Budd’s theme.
Carter discovers his brother was murdered over a backroom pornography racket, which leads Carter to chase down the killer – a man with eyes “like p--- holes in the snow” – to a colliery beach for a dank, depressing, booze-drenched end.
1. LA Confidential (1997)
Like Kim Basinger’s Veronica Lake-a-like hooker, this neo-noir is high-class, knockout stuff. Directed by Curtis Hanson – and adapted from the James Ellroy novel by Hanson and Brian Helgeland – it’s a triumph of style, performance, and screenwriting. Beneath it all, though, is an underbelly of filth and sleaze. And the sleazier it gets, the better.
It follows a series of intertwining investigations into murder, prostitution, and heroin, which ultimately lead to a conspiracy of deep-rooted police corruption. The investigations are led by a trio of powerhouse performances: Guy Pearce as ruthless careerist Lt. Edmund Exley; Russell Crowe as the thuggish, emotionally wounded detective Bud White; and Kevin Spacey as celebrity cop – and shameless publicity hound – Jack Vincennes.
Though not as complex as Ellroy’s novel it’s still dense with characters, backstory, and information. Every minute, every line of dialogue, every bristle (or punch-up) between the lead characters grabs you by the throat. It’s a film that basks in its genre while digging into the dark side of Hollywood – both the place and industry.