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There are almost 30 films directed by Martin Scorsese, not counting any of the shorts or documentaries he’s done, and he’s still active as a filmmaker now, in his 80s, with What Happens at Night being filmed at the time of writing (presently, a release date is not yet known). He’s been directing movies since the late 1960s, and he does have a reputation for quite often tackling the crime genre. By no means is that the only genre he’s thrived in, by any means, as the likes of The Last Temptation of Christ, Raging Bull, and Silence will hopefully show, but he has nonetheless made quite a few crime movies.
And of those crime movies, a fair few are about organized crime, and as such, can be labeled gangster movies. It’s important to make the distinction, and it’s the reason why you won’t see the likes of The Wolf of Wall Street and Taxi Driver in this ranking, even if they’re both technically crime-related (the former being about white-collar crime, and the latter being about one individual’s criminal actions; an isolated man not part of a gang lashing out against society). To date, there have been half a dozen gangster movies directed by Martin Scorsese, with all of them ranging from very good to masterful in quality (no bad ones, in other words), and all of them ranked below.
6
‘Casino’ (1995)
It feels weird to rank a movie as good as Casino in last place, but this is a ranking with only six movies, and all of those movies, as mentioned before, are pretty great. So, Casino is kind of the least great of a great bunch and, to be perfectly blunt, the main reason it’s here is that there’s another gangster movie directed by Scorsese that came out in 1990, and feels pretty similar to Casino. Other gangster films he’s directed offer something substantially new, in terms of feel, style, or setting (or all of the above), but Casino feels a little like Scorsese sticking to playing the hits.
The hits are great, and it’s fun to “hear” them in Las Vegas, which is where Casino is set (and it’s a pretty distinctive setting for a gangster film), but it’s the one gangster film of Scorsese’s that’s a bit too familiar. There’s another from 2019 that feels like a proper evolution of the gangster genre, as Scorsese’s tackled it, and the other soon-to-be-mentioned movies are different in scope and sometimes even by way of other genres tackled, so they feel a bit more significant than Casino. Casino is just like an extra profane and significantly more violent version of a film that Scorsese had already directed (again, that 1990 one… its time will come, later in the ranking), so it’s still great, but just not quite as special or unique as any other Scorsese gangster movie.
5
‘Mean Streets’ (1973)
The one that kind of started it all, in terms of Martin Scorsese gangster/mob movies, Mean Streets admittedly wasn’t the first Scorsese crime movie, owing to the existence of Boxcar Bertha. However, Mean Streets was his first great crime movie, and also, Boxcar Bertha was a crime movie without being a gangster movie, so it’s already gotten too much attention, for present purposes. Fuhgeddaboudit.
The neat thing about Mean Streets is that, in hindsight, it works so well as the earliest and most youthful Scorsese film about organized crime, seeing as the premise here involves a bunch of young men who want to be proper mobsters, but need to make names for themselves before they can really be part of the Mafia. And they’re not particularly good at the whole crime thing, which gets them into trouble, and that’s about as much by way of narrative as you get. Mean Streets is more about character and a certain vibe, over telling a complex story, and its scrappiness is ultimately more of a feature than a bug. It’s also fascinating to see all these little ideas and creative choices first explored or depicted by Scorsese here, years before he’d really hone his craft further and make some genuinely masterful gangster films. As a feature-length proof-of-concept movie, though, Mean Streets is pretty great.
4
‘Gangs of New York’ (2002)
Gangs of New York doesn’t always get a great deal of love and, to be fair, it is pretty messy. Yet the highs here are so good, and the stuff it does right as a true epic (perhaps the most ambitious Scorsese’s ever made) makes it worthy of standing alongside all the other (more popular) films he’s directed. It’s also one that stands out from most other gangster movies because of how far back it goes in time, with the narrative here mostly taking place in 1862, outside a fantastic opening sequence, which takes place about 16 years earlier, and then an ending that very briefly, but memorably, leaps forward in time through a series of shots.
Most of Gangs of New York revolves around one young man’s quest for revenge against the man who killed his father when he was just a boy, plus a lot of other stuff revolving around gangs fighting in… you know, that titular city Scorsese’s always loved depicting and exploring. Leonardo DiCaprio has given better performances in later Scorsese films (see The Aviator and Killers of the Flower Moon), but he’s better here than some give him credit for, even if he ultimately gets overshadowed by Daniel Day-Lewis pretty much at his peak. But then again, everyone gets a bit overshadowed by Day-Lewis. He’s incredible here, and almost overshadows the other highlight of Gangs of New York: the production design and all the other things that go into making it a technical marvel… uh, not to be confused with that other Marvel.
3
‘The Departed’ (2006)
To date, The Departed is the only movie Martin Scorsese’s directed that won Best Picture, and it also got him his one and only Best Director win, all while not quite being his very best film… but it was still a great one. Also, it’s neat that he’s won those Oscars for making a gangster movie, though it’s worth noting that this is a slightly different sort of gangster movie from his others, given how much of an emphasis it places on being a thriller alongside being a crime-drama. It’s a remake of Infernal Affairs, which is also great, and both movies have one hell of a premise: there are two people who have gone undercover, in effect, on opposite sides of the law, and they each try to out the other.
The Departed is perhaps the most suspenseful film Scorsese has ever directed, and it also stands as one of his most approachable/broadly entertaining.
A bunch of the main characters are cops, and then a bunch are gangsters, and The Departed rather gleefully spends a good chunk of its runtime highlighting the rather thin line between the two “institutions.” It’s also about mobsters in Boston, rather than the more expected New York City, which is another thing that sets The Departed apart from Scorsese’s other gangster movies. It’s perhaps the most suspenseful film he’s ever directed, and it also stands as one of his most approachable/broadly entertaining (not in a bad way, by any means).
2
‘The Irishman’ (2019)
Even though The Irishman is incredibly long, let’s keep this brief. It’s a movie that’s not entirely loved, but probably will be, to the same extent as all of Scorsese’s other crime films, once a couple more decades have passed by. It’s all about death, legacy, and the cruel way that time just keeps on ticking, and all those things will be even more hard-hitting once more by way of actual time has passed by. You can jump on the inevitable bandwagon then, at a time when many of the people who made The Irishman are no longer around to hear you sing their praises, or you can do it now, as it deserves.
That might sound callous to say, but The Irishman is very much the sort of thing that only an older filmmaker could make, and the same goes for age being needed for many of the cast members here to turn in such affecting performances. This feels like a film that’s designed to stand the test of time, and since 2019 wasn’t all that long ago, in the overall scheme of things, that quality can’t be fully appreciated yet. But mark this currently not-too-old writer’s words, and come back here in two, maybe three decades, and confirm to yourself how right he was. He’ll be waiting.
1
‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
Boring though it might be, to put Goodfellas in the top spot, what else could really go here? This is an all-time great adaptation of an already fantastic non-fiction crime book, Wiseguy, being all about Henry Hill and his experience living life as a gangster, having always aspired to be one from a very young age (as he mentions right near the start, via some narration). He makes it into the organization a little more than the fellas from Mean Streets, but he’s still a little bit of an outsider, and so his perspective does make Goodfellas stand out from other gangster movies.
If you’re talking about what the best gangster movie of all time is, you could probably pick The Godfather, its sequel, or Goodfellas. They’re, like, the prime candidates, and so that does make it, again, kind of boring that Goodfellas is #1 here. But it’s just so good. These Fellas are in such a Good movie. It’s relentless with its pacing, perfectly acted, visually immaculate from start to finish, and also elevated by an all-time great soundtrack. It’s a film that does everything right, and really, what more could you want? No, honestly… you couldn’t ask for anything more out of a movie than what you get in Goodfellas.
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Jeremy Urquhart
Almontather Rassoul
