Scorsese Gangster Movies, Ranked
In anticipation of The Irishman hitting theaters this November, I decided to rank all of Martin Scorsese’s gangster movies. This proved to be a terrible idea as all of these films are fantastic, and it took me a lot longer than I expected. I’m really splitting hairs here, and if you take issue with this list, know that I also love whichever film you think deserves the top spot. Except for Gangs of New York.
6. Gangs of New York
Gangs of New York is an interesting story about a seldom discussed period in American history. Leading up to and during the Civil War, New York City is dominated by gangs that function similarly to the Italian organized crime syndicates of the 20th century. Irish immigration is at its peak, much to the chagrin of the “native” Europeans who were born on American soil.
In his first of five collaborations with Scorsese to date, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Amsterdam Vallon, an Irish immigrant whose father is brutally murdered in a gang war by Bill “The Butcher” Cutting, the leader of the nativist gang played garishly by Daniel Day-Lewis. Vallon seeks vengeance on Cutting by infiltrating his gang and waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
My issue with this film is Day-Lewis’ loud, cartoonish performance. While the rest of the cast attempts to portray their characters in a grounded, realistic fashion, Day-Lewis puts on a ridiculous accent and contorted facial expression in every scene. He appears to be acting at his co-stars rather than playing off of them. It’s as if he’s acting in an absurdist satire, but no one else got the memo. This tonal dissonance continually pulled me out of the movie.
Scorsese creates an interesting world, and I found myself more drawn to the background than to the main story. The film has a lot to say about immigration, racism, war, and political corruption, but these themes are overshadowed by the main revenge plot and Day-Lewis’ distracting performance.
Gangs of New York is currently streaming on Netflix.
5. Goodfellas
I know I’m gonna get a lot of shit for this one. I would like to take this opportunity to remind you, dear reader, that every movie on this list is good. Goodfellas is a great film, but I think it’s overrated within the Scorsese canon. It receives a lot of well-deserved praise for being an original film that inspired hundreds of imitations. However, I think Scorsese has continued to improve his techniques in some of his later works listed below.
Goodfellas is beautifully written and impeccably shot, but its characters leave something to be desired. Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro’s characters are flat, and I was never emotionally invested in their success or failure. This isn’t the fault of the actors. The film just never delves beneath their surface-level motivations. Joe Pesci is deserving of his Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but he’s a tertiary character, and he improves on this role five years later in Casino. Scorsese is clearly more focused on examining the inner workings of the mafia than on developing rich characters. There’s nothing wrong with that, but he manages to do both in the remaining films on this list.
Goodfellas is available with a Cinemax subscription or can be rented through most online streaming services.
4. The Departed
I had forgotten just how good The Departed was until I rewatched it in preparation for this article. Scorsese’s only Best Picture winner is well-liked by critics, but it’s often thought of as a make-up Oscar after the Academy stiffed him for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and others. With DiCaprio, Nicholson, Damon, Wahlberg, Sheen, and Baldwin all performing at the top of their game, Scorsese creates an intense, gripping drama that blurs the lines between the police and the mafia.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Billy Costigan, a Boston police officer working deep undercover in the city’s biggest crime organization run by Frank Costello, a ruthless mob boss played by Jack Nicholson. Matt Damon plays Colin Sullivan, Costigan’s foil and Costello’s mole in the police department. Scorsese builds the film around the comparison of these two characters as one seeks to take down the crime syndicate from within while the other attempts to enable it from the outside.
Both organizations smell a rat in their midst, creating an incredibly tense atmosphere in which no one can be trusted. As suspicion builds, Costigan and Sullivan begin to discover other informants, revealing the depth of the police and the mafia’s codependency. The two entities function less like adversaries and more like partners as each relies on the other to stay in business. While the organizations keep each other afloat, every individual within them is ready to give up anyone at the drop of a hat if it means getting ahead or saving their skin. This dynamic serves as a commentary on American individualism and the casualties created by our capitalist society, which Scorsese would address more directly seven years later in The Wolf of Wall Street.
The Departed is available with a CBS All Access subscription or can be rented through most online streaming services.
3. Casino
The spiritual sequel to Goodfellas achieves something few sequels do — it’s better than the original. Casino examines the inner workings of the mafia on both a grander scale and a more intimate level than its predecessor.
Robert De Niro stars as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a proficient sports gambler placed in charge of the Tangiers Casino by a group of Midwest mafia bosses. Ace uses his superior betting knowledge to increase the casino’s profits and make it the premier gambling destination in Las Vegas. The film delves into the details of the casino business from the dealers to the pit bosses to the floor managers to the cash room and the skim operation that steals profits from the figurehead owner and sends them back to the Midwest bosses.
In order to protect their investment, the bosses send Ace’s childhood friend Nicky Santoro, played by Joe Pesci having the time of his life, to watch his back. Nicky has a quick temper and will not hesitate to beat the living shit out of any man twice his size just for looking at him the wrong way. What Nicky lacks in stature, he more than makes up for in pure insanity. He quickly earns a reputation as the most intimidating, dangerous man in town, much to the disappointment of Rothstein, who just wants to run his casino and avoid attention.
As their wealth increases, their friendship deteriorates. Simultaneously, Ace’s marriage begins to crumble as he spends more time at the casino and his wife turns to drugs. The disintegration of Ace’s relationships serves as a critique of greed and the damage it inflicts on those closest to him.
Casino is available with a Starz subscription or can be rented through most online streaming services.
2. Mean Streets
“You don’t make up for your sins in a church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it.”
These opening lines from a morally conflicted mobster are the thesis of Scorsese’s 1973 breakout film. Led by star-making performances from Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, Mean Streets examines the life of an up-and-coming mob enforcer balancing his corrupt career against his Catholic faith.
Scorsese grew up in a Sicilian family in Little Italy, New York. He had friends in the mafia and may have joined them if not for his asthma, which kept him indoors watching movies. As a devout Catholic, he studied to become a priest before electing instead to pursue filmmaking. Means Streets feels like his most personal film as it analyzes the dichotomy between two of his strongest influences.
Keitel plays the lead role of Charlie, nephew of the local mob boss and fervent Catholic. He collects debts for the mafia in hopes of soon running a restaurant that his uncle is forcing out of business with a usurious loan. Charlie is serious about his faith, but he lives it in his own way. Priests prescribe Hail Marys and Our Fathers to atone for his sins, but he feels that these are empty gestures. He prefers to absolve himself outside of the church by performing good works to outweigh the bad. This mentality manifests most notably in his attempts to help his friend Johnny Boy, a degenerate gambler played by De Niro.
Charlie continually vouches for Johnny Boy throughout the film, finding jobs for him and placating creditors that want to break his legs. Despite Charlie’s generosity, Johnny Boy is uninterested in turning his life around and repaying his debts. Charlie’s friends advise him to stop hanging out with Johnny, but he can’t let go. His best intentions only serve to enable his friend’s downward spiral.
Mean Streets is much more of a character study than Scorsese’s other mafia films. Instead of focusing on its operations, he uses the mafia as a high stakes environment in which to analyze faith, friendship, maturity, and the futility of helping someone who refuses to be helped.
Mean Streets is currently streaming on Netflix.
1. The Wolf of Wall Street
Yes, The Wolf of Wall Street is a gangster movie. It’s about an organized criminal operation that exploits the working class and enriches the people at the very top. The only difference between Stratton Oakmont and a mafia family is that it operates in a fancy office building rather than a dimly lit bar. And they don’t whack anyone. I guess that’s a pretty big difference, but you get my point.
The film follows the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, an entrepreneurial stock broker played by a wonderfully unhinged Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of his career. DiCaprio delivers a raw performance of a man addicted to every vice imaginable — booze, pills, attention, sex, and most of all, money.
Belfort begins his career on Wall Street at a respected firm under the tutelage of douchebag broker Mark Hanna played by Matthew McConaughey in one of his signature roles despite his limited screen time. Hanna teaches Belfort that the point of Wall Street is to make money for yourself at all costs. Fuck the clients. They’re just the suckers that exist to generate commission for the brokers.
When Belfort loses his job after the 1987 market crash, he uses Hanna’s advice to start his own firm selling penny stocks to ignorant working class people with fabricated stories about the companies and their potential. Penny stocks are subject to fewer regulations than traditional stocks, and brokers are able to charge much higher commission. As the firm grows, Belfort engages in larger crimes on larger scales in the pursuit of making as much money as humanly possible.
Scorsese documents Belfort’s obscene excess in great detail. The office is constantly full of hookers, cash, and drugs. The firm organizes a weekly act of debauchery for its employees featuring unique forms of entertainment such as head shaving, half naked marching bands, and little people that can be tossed at targets like lawn darts. Nothing is off limits. No line is uncrossed. Nothing gets in the way of Belfort’s manic pursuit of pure self-gratification.
In many ways, The Wolf of Wall Street feels like the culmination of Scorsese’s work in the gangster genre. Rather than focusing on America’s seedy underbelly, he shines a light directly at one of its most respected industries. Like the mafia, Wall Street doesn’t add any value to society. It functions only as a device to funnel money from the poor to the rich. Despite the incredibly harmful and far-reaching crimes committed by stock brokerages and their executives, they typically receive very little punishment, if any at all. For all the millions of dollars he steals and thousands of people he exploits, Belfort receives only a 36-month sentence. He’s currently out of prison giving sales seminars and leading a fairly normal life. The low risk of jail time makes Wall Street a very enticing racket and has abetted it in becoming the largest, most powerful crime syndicate in America today.
Scorsese’s gangster films have always critiqued capitalism, but this is his most direct attack. It’s simultaneously his most fun and his angriest film, and it’s mind boggling that he was able to pull that off. I’ve never had so much fun getting pissed off.
The Wolf of Wall Street is available on FX Now or can be rented on most online streaming services.
Martin Scorsese is one of the most skilled directors alive, and it was a ton of fun rewatching these films. I can’t wait to see all 3 hours and 29 minutes of The Irishman next month. Maybe I’ll come out with a revised ranking, or maybe I’ll be too lazy to write it. If you like the movies on this list, I’d encourage you to explore Scorsese’s work outside of the gangster genre. Some of my favorites are Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Silence. If you disagree with my rankings (and you undoubtedly do), post your ranking in the comments, and let’s discuss.
Michael Dixon is a mild mannered accountant by day and a mild mannered movie watcher by night. He will not do your taxes for you. He lives in Austin, Texas with his lovely television and collection of fine whiskies. You can’t purchase his book anywhere because it doesn’t exist.
