Ever since the dawn of movies as an art form, the crime genre has been one of the most popular and prolific. There’s something about watching these tales of wrongdoers, outlaws, and those who try to bring them to the law that’s utterly irresistible to watch on the big screen. As such, several of the films that are generally considered among the greatest of all time are crime movies.
Back during the 1920s, cinema truly came into its own as both a storytelling tool and an art in itself. Throughout the decade and in the later years, the crime film genre was perfected to the point that we now have masterpieces like Double Indemnity and Memories of Murder. Over the last century, there have been too many exceptional crime films to count, made by all kinds of artists from all over the world. These are the ten greatest crime movies of the last century, ranked from extraordinary to absolutely transcendental.
10
‘City of God’ (2002)
Directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund
Brazilian cinema has always been great, but it wasn’t until 2002’s City of God that it was put on the map internationally. It’s rather unsurprising, as this is precisely the kind of generation-defining masterpieces that prove to the world what a country has to offer in terms of cinematic output. Shocking, vibrant, and absolutely breathtaking, it’s a masterful mixture of the coming-of-age and crime genres.
City of God definitely requires a strong stomach, but its portrayal of life in the slums of Rio is so powerful, effectively unsettling, and perfectly balanced with moments of humor that it’s worth the effort of sitting through the whole thing. It’s one of the best international films of the last three decades, a stirring and thrilling character piece that proves that style and substance can be masterfully balanced when placed in the right hands.
9
‘Memories of Murder’ (2003)
Directed by Bong Joon Ho
Before he made Parasite and led it to become the first international film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar, Bong Joon Ho spent the earlier part of his career building himself up as one of the greatest and most famous South Korean filmmakers. He did so with movies like Memories of Murder, a true-crime thriller so exceptional that it’s still many people’s favorite entry in his filmography.
As far as murder mysteries go, it doesn’t get much more essential than this. Memories of Murder twists traditional tropes of the crime movie genre on their head using humor, satire, and dark turns in the narrative, delivering a police procedural that has something of crucial importance to say, but which never takes itself too seriously. The performances are fantastic, Bong’s direction is great, and the script is one of the most intelligent of the 2000s.
8
‘A Brighter Summer Day’ (1991)
Directed by Edward Yang
Clocking in at a whopping four hours long, the Taiwanese masterpiece A Brighter Summer Day by legendary auteur Edward Yang isn’t particularly well-suited for people who like their crime dramas quick, snappy, and thrill-dense. For those intrigued by the idea of an arthouse approach to the genre, however, this coming-of-age gem set in Taiwan during the ’50s and ’60s is a must-see.
A Brighter Summer Day is one of the best foreign arthouse films of all time, with a runtime that allows it to shift tones, genres, and narrative focus several times throughout the story. Going from a violent tale about teen gangs to a more traditional coming-of-age family story, it feels like it goes through the full range of the human condition several times during the runtime. Tender, poignant, artsy, and absolutely fascinating throughout, A Brighter Summer Day is one of the greatest films of all time.
7
‘The Young and the Damned’ (1950)
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Spanish-Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel is one of the most influential auteurs in movie history, the grandfather of cinematic surrealism. He worked in Spain, Mexico, and France throughout his career, but many of his best works come from his Mexican era, including The Young and the Damned, a harrowing drama about a group of young criminals living a violent life in the festering slums of Mexico City.It’s a biting social critique, a gut-wrenching Neorealist masterpiece with Buñuel’s unique surrealist touch, and one of the most essential Mexican films in history. The Young and the Damned is one of the most devastatingly human crime films seen through the eyes of children, as well as a study of the societies that allow juvenile delinquency to flourish. Seventy-five years later, this triumph of the crime genre has aged beautifully.
6
‘Double Indemnity’ (1944)
Directed by Billy Wilder
What film noir exactly is remains a topic of contention. Some call it a genre, others call it a film movement, while others simply think it’s a style. Whatever the case, something is certain: Double Indemnity is the best noir film of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Exemplifying everything that makes noir such a compelling and provocative category of movies, it’s some of the best work of one of Classic Hollywood’s biggest icons: Billy Wilder.
The tone is dark yet never humorless; the writing is tight and full of powerful character moments; and the way the film creatively experiments with traditional noir tropes is a delight. Double Indemnity is an elegant deconstruction of greed, temptation, and the American Dream, with one of film noir’s most interesting protagonists, played by the underrated Fred MacMurray, and perhaps its best femme fatale, a career-best Barbara Stanwyck.
5
‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
The Silence of the Lambs, the most recent film to win the big five Academy Awards (Picture, Directing, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress), is one of the highest-rated thrillers on IMDb, and for good reason. Complex, taut, and so incredibly dark that some might go so far as to consider it a horror movie as well, it’s a crime thriller masterpiece anchored by a pair of powerhouse performances by Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.
The Silence of the Lambs is intricately written, with Foster’s Clarice Starling and especially Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter being two of the crime genre’s most iconic characters.
Shocking, violent, and psychologically complex to its core, The Silence of the Lambs is a truly legendary crime film that transcends the boundaries of its genres. It’s intricately written, with Foster’s Clarice Starling and especially Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter being two of the crime genre’s most iconic characters, and it’s so masterfully paced and directed that it’s impossible to take one’s eyes off the screen at any point. Rarely are crime films this fascinatingly horrifying.
4
‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino is a household name nowadays, but back in the beginning of 1994, he was an up-and-coming talent with just one movie in his portfolio. Pulp Fiction was his second film ever, and seeing as it’s generally counted among the greatest films of all time, it’s not shabby at all for a director’s sophomore feature. It broke new ground in the realm of multi-narrative films and spawned a wave of similar stories so great that any multi-narrative movie made today can’t avoid comparisons to Tarantino’s magnum opus.
Pulp Fiction has a stunning cast delivering some of the best work of their careers, a brilliant screenplay that deservedly earned Tarantino a Best Screenplay Oscar win, and a structure and rhythm that flow surprisingly smoothly despite the long runtime. It’s one of the best films of the ’90s, a pulpy cult classic that’s as thrilling, provocative, and utterly fascinating as it was over thirty years ago.
3
‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese is regarded by many as the greatest filmmaker working today, which is largely a result of the chameleonic way in which he’s able to adapt to any genre he’s working in. However, there’s one genre that he’s particularly well-known for, and that’s crime, more particularly, mobster films. The question of what his best one is usually gets one specific answer: Goodfellas, the best crime movie of the 1990s.
Indeed, Goodfellas may just be the biggest banger in the history of gangster movies. Scorsese, who has never been better, does a masterful job of creating a sense of progression that perfectly matches the protagonist Henry Hill‘s criminal journey. What starts as a crime thriller of inebriating adrenaline slowly turns into a gritty character study full of tragedy and poignancy. The performances are legendary, the dialogue is highly quotable, and the needle drops are heavenly. Crime cinema rarely gets much better than this.
2
‘Chinatown’ (1974)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Whereas most noir and neo-noir films, particularly those about detectives, tend to be about characters taking an overwhelming situation and slowly using their deductive skills to narrow the problem down to a shocking solution, Chinatown goes in the complete opposite direction. What starts as a relatively simple case of adultery for Jack Nicholson‘s J.J. Gittes gradually involves him in a web of deceit and corruption far too large and overpowering for any one detective to be able to handle.
The world-building, characterization, and thematic work in Chinatown are some of the best that the neo-noir genre has ever seen, thanks to Robert Towne‘s incredibly taut and complex script. The performances, especially Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and a truly chilling John Huston, are phenomenal, the direction is masterful, and the ending is one of the most gut-wrenching of any non-horror movie in history.
1
‘The Godfather’ (1972) and ‘The Godfather Part II’ (1974)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Since Francis Ford Coppola‘s The Godfather is regarded by many as the single greatest motion picture in history, and The Godfather Part II is somehow considered even better by others, it’s no revolutionary thing to say that they’re the best crime films in history. Their greatness extends far beyond the confines of the crime or mobster genres: they’re faultless examples of the filmmaking craft at its very best, with every single element on and off-screen working in perfect conjunction to create two of the most enthralling stories ever told on the silver screen.
They’re both far and away two of the most timeless films ever made, the product of a creative team where every single member appears to be delivering their best work. Actors like Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and Diane Keaton have never been better; the scripts are two of the tightest, most complex, and most intelligent in movie history; Coppola’s direction is absolute perfection, both tonally and visually; and the overarching story of Michael Corleone’s rise to power and spiritual fall is one of the most fascinating ever told through film. It’ll take something very special to take the throne of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II as the two best crime films of the last century.