Crime is such a broad area, it is very hard to make a list of the best crime movies of all time. There are plays about crime, thrillers about crime, and even comedies about crime. There are crimes in movies that feel so real that all you can do is sit there and wait for the screen to go black while you try to get all those feelings out of your system. There are also crimes that are so out of this world that all you can do is cheer for the bad guys because they are so brave.
In Old California, Hollywood’s first movie, which came out in 1910, is partly about crime. In the more than 100 years since then, crime hasn’t left our screens very often. All of this is said to show that it’s hard to make a complete list that isn’t as long as Vito Corleone’s rap sheet. But we’ve made a short list of movies that we think are the best in the crime field. If you don’t agree, don’t let any of the movies on the list influence your own work.
Here are the Top 25 Best Crime Movies of All Time
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
One of the examples of the best crime movies of all time on screen of the old saying “he who seeks, finds.” In Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio takes on some of the real-life story of Frank Abagnale Jr., a counterfeiter who was on the run from the FBI and pretended to be a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. There’s a good case to be made that this is the part for which DiCaprio really deserved the Oscar. He plays the main character, who is only 21, with just the right amount of cockiness and worry. Catch Me If You Can has all the charm of Steven Spielberg’s movies and a white-collar adrenaline rush that makes it a timeless classic. Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, and a young Amy Adams all play minor roles.
In Bruges (2008)
After the success of The Banshees of Inisherin and its awards season, it’s hard to believe that Colin Farrell could have been just another hot star made by a machine in the second half of the 2000s. Hollywood. But at the end of a downward spiral, Martin McDonagh and Brendan Gleeson came into her life with this tight and funny story about hitmen stuck in Bruges with only one mission: to stay hidden. The dullness of spending time in the city’s dark beauty and Farrell and Gleeson’s reluctance to settle down make me feel like a powder keg about to go off.
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Drive (2011)
Ryan Gosling drives in Drive. And it’s something he does very well. The actor plays a man who works as a stunt driver and a getaway pilot. Why he does either job is a puzzle that will never be solved.
Drive was inspired by Hollywood film noir and the archetypes of the Old West, in which the main characters can have a personal side that isn’t very obvious. The movie could have been a flop if Ryan Gosling hadn’t been such an unpredictable enigma and if Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, and Oscar Isaac hadn’t done great work in supporting roles. It’s a movie that feels both full and empty, because Gosling’s character, who is never given a name, gets involved in a chaotic little crime ring that makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a Grand Theft Auto mission, which is pretty much the point.
Commando Special (2012)
We’ve already said that there are many different kinds of best crime movies of all time, and it’s hard to ignore the fact that there are a lot of crime comedies. Part of that high point is taken up by the movie Commando Especial, which has no reason to be as funny as it is since it is based on a mediocre 1980s show.
In the movie, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum play young-looking cops who are sent undercover to a high school to stop a drug ring. This is the same idea as the original show. The pair is a standard case of a jock and a nerd, but the plot turns things around. Hill is funny, but Tatum really steals the show as the lovable muscle-bound clown he was born to play. The movie doesn’t come up with anything new, but the fact that he knows he’s basically stepping on 20-year-old ground to shake up the nostalgia-filled hornet’s nest is what makes it great.
Good Time: Living on the Edge (2017)
After watching Good Time, you’ll need a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, and a spiritual meditation coach on speed dial just to get rid of all the knots of stress you’ve built up during its 101-minute length. Still, since it’s a Safdie brothers movie, it was always going to walk that fine line between being very stressful and a chance to have a lot of fun.
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Robert Pattinson plays Connie, a bank robber who is doing a great job of being truly unattractive. Connie is trying to get his mentally handicapped brother out of the system, but he and his brother end up on the run from the law after making a series of bad decisions. The movie is a visual feast of dirt, bright lights, and the seedy side of New York. It makes you feel like your eyes are being opened and you are being forced to see the real sadness of the city, which is easy to ignore.
Fast and Furious (2001)
Fast and Furious started out as a small, seemingly one of the isolated crime action movies in 2001. The fact that it has become a new comic-style world of heroes and villains, somewhere between Transformers and The Avengers, is really strange when you think about it.
Set during the city’s underground races, Paul Walker plays an LAPD detective who has to infiltrate a street gang to catch its leader. The leader has modified Honda Civics for a heist, which is hilariously old-fashioned given that the latest movie literally put cars in space. Walker’s character, Brian, and Vin Diesel’s character, Dominic Toretto, have a strange relationship that could have begun and finished with this one stand-alone adventure. The rest, as they say, is history.
The Big Swindle (2001)
The Big Hug is the best movie about a robbery. It’s a movie that feels like a chemical formula where, if one thing were different, it would end in a nuclear explosion.
Danny Ocean, played by George Clooney, is a famous thief who puts together an all-star team to rob Andy Garcia’s Las Vegas casino on the biggest night of the year. It has a great cast, including Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, etc., and as a remake of a classic from the 1960s, it takes all the glamour of Hollywood’s “golden age” into the 21st century. Steven Soderbergh is in charge of the movie’s main heist, which always feels like it’s about to go wrong, even though you know it’s going to be a hit.
The Departed (2005)
Infernal Affairs, Martin Scorsese’s mob-themed Hong Kong crime tale from 2001, put him back on the road and in the criminal underworld, where he had done some of his best work.
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The director puts together an all-star group that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, and Mark Wahlberg, all of whom have worked at the top of Hollywood but never seemed to be in the same circle. This constant sense of weirdness is what makes The Departed so tense and disturbing as we watch Boston gangsters play police officers and vice versa.
The movie is an opera. It’s a story about trust and betrayal, and the dialogue is so cleverly shady that it makes it feel like a real 1970s movie, which is what Scorsese’s work is based on.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Some story twists in movies make you feel like your brain just exploded in your head. In the case of The Usual Suspects, it made people talk about it for decades.
Even if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you probably know how it ends, just like you did with The Sixth Sense or The Sinister Island. But even with that delayed surprise at the end, it’s still a very entertaining neo-noir crime movie.
We go back in time as part of a police questioning to find out who was the criminal mastermind behind a ship massacre in which all but two small-time criminals are killed. We’ll stop there because going into more depth would really mess up everything. Few things in life are as exciting as a good twist, which reminds us that we can still be surprised even when it seems like we’ve seen everything.
Seven Deadly Sins (1995)
Everything in Seven by David Fincher is ugly. The city without a name, the outlaws, the crimes, and the view of life. In this movie, the weather is always bad, and the murders that happen all over the city make it feel even smaller and more stuffy.
Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman play two cops who are looking for a killer who gets his ideas from the seven deadly sins and commits crimes that are grosser and grosser each time.
In the 1990s, there were a lot of high-concept crime tales with plots based on old books or serial killers who were way more awesome than us normal people. The movie is mostly about that, but the scary parts are also nothing special. Our leads and our killer are so tired that they can’t do anything else, and any possible “I got you” scene loses its shine right away. The Seven Deadly Sins is such a dark book.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
People talk a lot about changes in culture, but in fact, there haven’t been many that are worth talking about. But Pulp Fiction is most certainly one of them.
Molotov cocktail of excess is a crime odyssey by Quentin Tarantino. It tells several stories of criminal acts in no particular order, from the hit men played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson to Uma Thurman’s iconic femme fatale and Bruce Willis’ doomed boxer.
His second movie, after Perros de Reservoir, gave Miramax a big boost in the 1990s and made Tarantino the coolest director in town. It also solidified a style of filmmaking that has been copied over and over but never beat. Tarantino’s now-famous style of scattered ideas and too much going on visually was never better or more at home than in Pulp Fiction. It’s the best example of a rage where nothing is held back.
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather, a gem by Francis Ford Coppola from 1972, gave us mobsters the way Shakespeare did. This is an epic story about the complicated family networks at the heart of organized crime. There are dramatic turns of deception and old ideas of piety and respect for elders. The Godfather is not only the best crime movie ever made, but also the best movie ever made. This is because it mixes traditional ideals with intense scenes of violence.
Marlon Brando’s performance as Vito Corleone is, of course, a career-defining part, but the supporting roles of Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, and Diane Keaton broaden his impact beyond the cotton that gets stuck in Brando’s cheeks during the shoot. The mafia world built by Coppola and Mario Puzo, who wrote the original book, has a majesty to it that gives it a kind of historical richness.
Another list of some best crime movies of all time below
- Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)
- Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
- White Heat (1949)
- The Untouchables (1987)
- Rope (1948)
- Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
- Uncut Gems (2019)
- Badlands (1973)
- City of God (2002)
- Chinatown (1974)
- Zodiac (2007)
- Fargo (1996)
- Heat (1995)
