The 10 Best Gangster Movies Of All-Time (Not Named ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Goodfellas’)

Based on the novels of Norbert Jacques, the great Fritz Lang (who maybe possibly almost definitely killed his first wife) introduces evil criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge). Hypnotist, gambler of course, master of vicious henchmen and manipulator of stock markets, Dr. Mabuse orchestrates heists, Jedi Mind Tricks millionaires, and in the end, after a massive gunfight, finds himself beset, literally, by the ghosts of all his victims. Beautifully-shot in the German Expressionist tradition, it’s a beast at just over four hours, but worth the investment.

Where to stream Dr. Mabuse The Gambler

Indian filmmaker Anurag Kashyap’s masterpiece is another four-hour-plus monster that, like Lang’s film, was split into two films for meek distributors intimidated by its length. A sprawling, delirious, decades-spanning crime epic covering the rises and falls of three crime families fighting over, essentially, coal fortunes. Shot in Varanasi, Bihar, and Chunar, the picture is alive with regional specificities of dialect, music, and interpersonal politics. At once universal and specific, then, Kashyap makes a film to rival Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs and The Conformist.

Where to stream Gangs of Wasseypur

Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s expansive crime saga (remade in the United States as one film by Martin Scrosese as The Departed) is a three-part exploration of male friendships, loyalty and, of course, crime and its deleterious impact on the human soul. A star-studded Hong Kong cast featuring Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Eric Tsang, Sammi Cheng and the great Anthony Wong (long referred to by cinephiles as the Chinese DeNiro) come together to tell the tale of an undercover cop infiltrating a powerful crime syndicate who finds the lines blurred between honor to his mission, and honor to himself.

Where to stream Infernal Affairs

Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece is probably Le Samourai, the film John Woo made into The Killer, but he also made the great gangster flick Le Cercle Rouge. Alain Delon is Corey, released from prison as the film starts to immediately resume his life of crime, knocking over high end jewelry stores and planning that last big score. Delon is best when he’s a blank, beautiful screen upon which Melville could project this glorious emptiness: the perfect avatar for the moral desert of the film.

Where to stream Le Cercle Rouge

A proto-Billy Bathgate, this Samuel Fuller gangster flick finds a fourteen-year-old Tolly Devlin (Cliff Robertson!) playing both sides against the middle, Red Harvest-style to exact revenge on the mobsters who killed his dad. The table set for hails of gunfire, what Fuller is more interested in are the compromises Tolly makes to his character in his pursuit of vengeance. Tolly rejects kindness, rejects attempts made by good people to reach him and break him out of the cycle of violence and loss, and in the end gains the whole world but loses his soul.

Where to stream Underworld USA

WIlliam Wellman’s pre-code classic features a landmark performance by an always-jittery Jimmy Cagney as a street thug graduating to bootlegger to crime lord to, perhaps inevitably, corpse. It sports that brutal moment when Cagney’s Tom shoves a grapefruit into his girlfriend Kitty’s (Mae Clarke) face – a scene we revisit in films like The Big Heat and The Long Goodbye. The influence of this film on all that came behind it is massive. It’s one of the major headwaters of the genre.

Where to stream The Public Enemy

Fernando Meirelles’ blazing, barbaric yawp is set in the teeming Brazilian favelas, the City of God suburb of tourist mecca Rio De Janeiro. In microcosm, it covers the battle between dealer Li’l Zé and all-around bad dude Knockout Ned – and that battle is florid and violent – but the real magic of City of God is its sense of place. It feels like a science fiction setting alive with colors, smells, flavors and packed to the rafters with desperate humanity. Every moment is sweaty; every stake is high. It’s pure adrenaline.

Where to stream City of God

Maestro Sergio Leone’s last film (which was his first film in 13 years) is this extraordinary study of two childhood friends (like The Public Enemy) and their rises and falls through decades of criminal misadventure. Featuring career best moments from actors who already had career bests (Robert De Niro, James Woods, Joe Pesci, Treat Williams), the richness of this films nostalgia for a long-lost vision of New York casts all of it into this brutal fairy tale version of the American Dream.

Where to stream Once Upon A Time In America

Japanese Renaissance man “Beat” Takeshi Kitano presents what it might have looked like had Ozu made a Scorsese picture. Punctuated by poetic “pillow moments” of long, static shots of objects and contemplative, still camera sets capturing his gallery of gangsters wandering in and out of frame, Kitano establishes the worries of man as meaningless in the larger context of the world. Home to some of the best gunplay in the gangster genre, it’s also a work of deep philosophical significance and, finally, a surpassing grace.

Where to stream Sonatine

The Coen Bros. were so stymied by this riff on Dashiell Hammett that they took a break to write a whole other movie, Barton Fink. The result of their labors is one of the most intricate, beautifully-plotted and conceived films of all-time: a dulcet ode to masculine friendships, tough-talking dames, and the perils of being the smartest man in the room. Everyone is good in this. Everything is lush and gorgeous in the frame. Even the score by the great Carter Burwell is laced with melancholy. With the exception of the Godfather movies and Goodfellas, it is the best gangster film ever made.

Walter Chaw is the Senior Film Critic for filmfreakcentral.net. His book on the films of Walter Hill, with introduction by James Ellroy, is due in 2020. His monograph for the 1988 film MIRACLE MILE is available now.

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