the best gangster films of all time

Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)

Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971

The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971

The best gangster films of all time

Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) starred Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway (both above), Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons. After Clyde (Beatty) tries to steal the car of Bonnie (Dunaway)’s mother, the pair team up and go on a bank-robbing spree across America.

Picture: Rex Features

Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931) starred Edward G. Robinson, Glenda Farrell and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Robinson stars as the small-time criminal Enrico Bandello who robs a petrol station and ascends to the upper echelons of the world of organised crime.

Picture: Rex Features

The Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931) The Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931) starring James Cagney (left), Lee Phelps, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods and Mae Clarke. The film relates the story of a young man's rise in the criminal underworld in prohibition-era urban America. The film launched Cagney to stardom.

Picture: Rex Features

White Heat (1949) starring James Cagney , Virginia Mayo and Edmond O'Brien. Cagney plays Arthur “Cody” Jarrett, a deranged mob boss who dreams of being “on top of the world” and is imprisoned for his part in a train robbery.

Picture: Rex Features

The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) starring Lee Marvin, Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford. It is about a cop (Glenn Ford) who takes on the crime syndicate that controls his city after the brutal murder of his beloved wife.

Picture: Rex Features

The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) starring Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco and Marcel Bozzuffi. It tells the story of New York Police Department detectives named 'Popeye' Doyle (Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Schneider) and how they try to stop the smuggling of narcotics between Marseille and New York.

Picture: Rex Features

The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) starred Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard S. Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton. The story spans ten years from 1945 to 1955 and chronicles the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family.

Picture: Rex Features

Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973) starred Harvey Keitel , Robert De Niro, David Proval and Amy Robinson. The film is about Charlie (Harvey Keitel) who is a young Italian-American who is trying to move up in the local New York mafia but is hampered by his feeling of responsibility towards his reckless friend, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), a small-time gambler who owes money to many loan sharks.

Picture: Rex Features

The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) starred Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton. A sequel to the enormously successful first part, it continued the story of new mob boss Michael Corleone (Pacino) in 1958, as well as detailing how Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro), his father, escaped to New York from Sicily in 1901.

Picture: Rex Features

Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983) starred Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer and Mary Elizabeth. Based on Howard Hawks' original 1932 film of the same name, the film tells the story of Montana (Al Pacino) a Cuban refugee who comes to Miami in 1980 as a result of the Mariel Boatlift and becomes a drug cartel kingpin during the cocaine boom of the 1980s. The movie chronicles his rise to the top of Miami's cocaine empire.

Picture: Rex Features

Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) starred Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern and William Forsythe. The film explores themes of childhood friendships, love, lust, greed, betrayal, loss, broken relationships, and the rise of mobsters in American society.

Picture: Rex Features

The Untouchables (Brian De Palma 1987) starred Andy Garcia, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith. The film follows government agent Eliot Ness's (Costner) autobiographical account of his efforts to bring Capone to justice during the Prohibition era.

Picture: Rex Features

Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen, 1990) starring Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito and Albert Finney. Loosely based on the Dashiell Hammett classics, Red Harvest and The Glass Key, the film follows Tom Reagan (Byrne), the right-hand man of city boss Leo O’Bannon and the fallout from an attempted hit on bookmaker Bernie Bernbaum (Turturro).

Picture: Rex Features

Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) starred Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Paul Sorvino and Joe Pesci. The film follows the rise and fall of three gangsters over the decades of the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s.

Picture: Rex Features

True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993) was written by Quentin Tarantino and starred Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and James Gandolfini. Christian Slater plays tough guy Clarence Worley, who discovers a suitcase of cocaine before trying to sell it in Hollywood.

Picture: Rex Features

Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma, 1993) stars Al Pacino, Penelope Ann Miller and Sean Penn. The film focuses on Carlito Brigante's (Al Pacino) activities once he is released from prison. Carlito, a Puerto Rican criminal, vows to go straight and to retire in paradise. However, his past will not let him, and he unwittingly ends up being dragged into the same criminal activities that got him imprisoned in the first place.

Picture: Rex Features

Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995) starred Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, Frank Vincent, Don Rickles and James Woods. Robert De Niro (above) plays Sam 'Ace' Rothstein, a Jewish-American top gambling handicapper who is called by the Mob to oversee the day-to-day operations at the fictional Tangiers casino in Las Vegas.

Picture: Rex Features

Donnie Brasco (Mike Newell, 1997) starred Al Pacino, James Russo, Bruno Kirby Jr, Michael Madsen and Johnny Depp. It is based on the real-life events of Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family, one of the Mafia's Five Families based in New York City during the 1970s, under the alias 'Donnie Brasco'

Picture: Rex Features

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) starred Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Ving Rhames, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth. Tarantino’s second feature is a typically allusive story composed of three interlocking narratives. A large part of the story follows two gangsters, played by Travolta and Jackson (above), and their dealings with their boss (Ving Rhames), his wife and the ageing prize-fighter Butch Coolidge (Willis).

Picture: Rex Features

The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

The Untouchables (Brian De Palma 1987)

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