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Posted
36 minutes ago, Dennis Taylor said:

Hilarious story Damon tells about the genius that is Jack

 

 

I write. That is fantastic. Any writer can benefit from that tape. Thanks.

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Posted

1) Menace II Society

2) Once Upon a Time in America

3) Casino

4) Goodfellas 

5) Dead Presidents (does this one count?)

 

Honorable Mention: The Departed

 

The Godfather is like the Lockhart BBQ joints of movies. Sure it was the original gangster movie and was good at the time, but goddamn it doesnt hold up. Once Upon a Time in America took the mantle, what, 10 years later ?

Posted (edited)

Reservior Dogs in the discussion?  almost certainly not a Top 5, but still...

Several very memorable scenes and a great soundtrack.

Edited by Iceman
Posted
11 hours ago, Helobious said:

This might be the whitest post in the history of the site. It’s “Boyz n the Hood”.

Holy living fuck at omitting Goodfellas. The Godfather is romanticized trash that portrays a sense of honor and order in the mafia that had no basis in reality. Goodfellas was the real deal.

1) Goodfellas

2) Blood In, Blood Out

3) Menace 2 Society

4) Boyz n the Hood

5) Scarface

Scarface top five but Godfather I and II are trash...ok sure...i assume you mean the Al Pacino version. do you even know that version of Scarface is a remake? 

 

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Posted
31 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

1) Menace II Society

2) Once Upon a Time in America

3) Casino

4) Goodfellas 

5) Dead Presidents (does this one count?)

 

Honorable Mention: The Departed

 

The Godfather is like the Lockhart BBQ joints of movies. Sure it was the original gangster movie and was good at the time, but goddamn it doesnt hold up. Once Upon a Time in America took the mantle, what, 10 years later ?

Angry Fox Tv GIF by Hell's Kitchen

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Posted
15 minutes ago, Iceman said:

Reservior Dogs in the discussion?  almost certainly not a Top 5, but still...

Several very memorable scenes and a great soundtrack.

Reservoir Dogs like Heat is a crime movie not a gangster movie

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Posted
18 hours ago, Celery Man said:

What the fuck is wrong with you people. It starts with Goodfellas.

 

honestly even Casino I’d put above The Untouchables.

 

3 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Donnie Brasco, Carlito's Way, A Bronx Tale - these all to me fall into the category of fun mafia movies that have really great mob movie scenes but also aren't actually great movies. "Now youse can't leave" "fuhgeddaboutit". I think Donnie Brasco is probably the best out of these and Lefty (and Pacino's portrayal of him) is a great mob character. He may be the best combination of.... he's not much more than a piece of shit thief scumbag and yet you can empathize with his plight, living the consequence of a lifetime of being a piece of shit. It's also interesting how much of the plot is relatable to corporate drones - he's got some ambition to be more than essentially a low level manager and it's never going to happen for him, and then he's getting batted around in a power struggle at the higher levels, his golden boy protege is ripped from him, it all blows up and they're going to chuck him out with the trash.

 

I'm coming back around on Donnie Brasco being a good movie. It suffers from being very late 90s.

I haven't watched The Untouchables in maybe 8 years or so but I remember thinking it was not nearly as good as I remembered it. It may also be just suffering from seeming very of its time.

Donnie Brasco is overrated tripe. I've tried to watch it 3 or 4 times in my life and have wound up finding better shit to do and never finishing it. That includes turning it off at least once and turning the tv over to a Chopped or something else like it. 

The Untouchables gets knocked because it's not off-broadway enough for a lot of you guys who fancy yourselves as enlightened movie critics. Capone beats the literal brains out of a guy with a baseball bat. Ness throws Frank Nitty off of a fucking building to his death (I know this factually didn't occur, but it's a satisfying ending). It's set in Chicago at Capone's height.

There are several iconic movie scenes and lines with great fucking actors in them - the blood oath scene with Costner and Connery; the mounty border raid "The surprise is half the battle." "Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle."; Ness confronting Capone in his hotel; and of course the train station with the stairs, the shootout, the stroller - "You got him?" "Yeah, I got 'em." .... "Take 'em." bang!

It's a movie about Al fucking Capone and Elliott Ness, was written by David Mamet, directed by Brian De Palma, and Connery won the academy award for Best Supporting Actor. It is about as gangster as a movie can get and it was really well done. 

I don't expect it to be in many gangster top 5's, but deriding it is silly.

*********

Also, for everyone who obsesses about Goodfellas being at the top of the heap, I don't even think that's Ray Liotta's best gangster movie.

Copland is one of the most underrated movies of all time. The cops were the gangsters, Harvey Keitel was terrific, a coked out Liotta was fantastic and Stallone was actually really good as the buffoonish foil to Keitel's menacing mob of miscreants. Oh, and DeNiro had an amazing scene while literally eating a sandwich and going on a tirade with his mouth full.

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Posted
13 hours ago, Carl Spackler said:

Any top 5 list of gangster movies that does not include Goodfellas, The Godfather, and The Godfather II is objectively wrong.

Surprised that Donnie Brasco and Eastern Promises have not at least been mentioned yet.

Yup.

Any serious person is just debating the final 2 spots.

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Posted (edited)

The Departed is a fucking incredibly entertaining film and I really couldn't care less about it's flaws.  It's pretty easily in my Top 5.

For me the hard part is Casino vs Scarface.  I'd probably go with Casino, just because Nicky Santoro is more or less the same character as Tommy DeVito, and I can't think of any other character deaths I've enjoyed as much as those two.  Plus, every douchebag I knew in college had a Tony Montana poster in their dorm room so I guess Scarface suffers the hit.

Edited by Al_4_ISU
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Posted (edited)

I love the drift from subjective to objective in Surly discussions. 

It's stupid to think that there is a definitive top five of any genre. I enjoy reading everyone's choices. I'm reminded of movies that I've forgotten or never seen. 

The Untouchables was crap to me. Donnie Brasco is, to me, over-rated. I'm glad to be reminded of Carlito's Way which is really great.

Dillinger is inarguable to me as among the top five.

I'm not getting into a knife fight over any of it.

Edited by RomaVicta
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Posted



Oh, and DeNiro had an amazing scene while literally eating a sandwich and going on a tirade with his mouth full.


Would have been totally justified if he'd received an Oscar for this and "yeww blewww it!" alone. Copland is a gem.

Some of y'all would benefit from checking out Noir Alley on TCM. Great fucking gangster films pop up all the time.

My only issue w/ The Untouchables is that Costner is the worst actor in every scene he's in except for maybe the 8 year old girl playing his daughter. That and the horribly annoying music score.
Posted
9 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Don’t get me wrong because obviously the godfathers are a couple of the greatest all time films, but apart from sorta kinda the deniro bit of II they have nothing to do with the actual mafia. They were never any more honorable than Clemenza.

High level. Like a corporate entity, but with illegal murder.

Posted
5 hours ago, GreenspointTexas said:

1) Menace II Society

2) Once Upon a Time in America

3) Casino

4) Goodfellas 

5) Dead Presidents (does this one count?)

 

Honorable Mention: The Departed

 

The Godfather is like the Lockhart BBQ joints of movies. Sure it was the original gangster movie and was good at the time, but goddamn it doesnt hold up. Once Upon a Time in America took the mantle, what, 10 years later ?

Gentlemen,

I present to you Peak Surly.

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Posted
37 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

One movie that's completely forgotten about is Road to Perdition.  I'll watch it maybe every 3 years and every time it's fantastic.

 

completely forgotten about except for literally the first post in this thread and then multiple other posts

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Posted

One of my favorite gangster movies is on right now. I just love when Dough Boy does the Acapella. 

Ready to start handing out negs for the GF is trash crowd. What in the fuck? Let me guess, it insists upon itself?

PXL_20250204_220452525.jpg

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Posted
6 minutes ago, Michael Knight said:

completely forgotten about except for literally the first post in this thread and then multiple other posts

That's only true if you believe it.

 

Posted
56 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

One movie that's completely forgotten about is Road to Perdition.  I'll watch it maybe every 3 years and every time it's fantastic.

 

Shit man, good call.

I haven't watched that in years.  I have it on DVD somewhere.  Need to dust it off, but that movie absolutely blew me away in the theatres.

Posted

I don’t think Black Mass has been mentioned. Not top 5 but fun to watch Depp chew the scenery as Whitey Bulger.

I think part of the problem is the definition of gangster. When I hear gangster movies, I’m thinking the mafia, or at least established organized crime.

Some of my all time favorite moves, like Heat and Ronin, are great crime movies but not gangster movies.

And I think Untouchables depends somewhat on your age. I was 15 when it came out in 1987 and I saw it in the theater. It was a huge role for Costner coming off of a great supporting part in Silverado (great fucking movie) and the start of a run that would include No Way Out, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Dances With Wolves, and Robin Hood in the next *four years*. Connery was in great form and already a legend, but he was coming off of Highlander and The Name of the Rose, not exactly blockbusters, so it was exciting to see him in such a good role for him. Deniro was on his way to being a legend but was coming off some odd roles too, like The Mission and Angel Heart, and this put him right back on track for legend. I had never seen anything like the baseball bat scene.

Point is that if you are Gen X there is a lot of nostalgia around Untouchables, and as an 80s movie (there was a LOT of crap in the 80s) I think it holds up well.

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Posted

I don't think of LA Confidential as a gangster movie. I think of it as a cop movie. 

Mine would be:

1 - Goodfellas

2a/b - Godfathers

4 - Eastern Promises

5 - In Bruges

But I'm not sure if In Bruges is really a gangster film. Regardless, it's one of my favorite films ever. I like it disproportionally more than most people. 

I agree with the poster above who said that the Godfathers are better films, but Goodfellas is the more quintessential/better gangster movie. I've watched goodfellas probably 25 times, but I've only seen each Godfather film 2 or 3 times. Kinda like the concept that I can admit the Beatles are better/more influential than the Stones, but I listen to the Stones 10x more than I listen to the Beatles. 

Posted
On 2/3/2025 at 9:51 PM, RomaVicta said:

Maybe these are just bank robber movies, but they should never be overlooked:

  • Bonnie and Clyde
  • Dillinger (Warren Oates) (such a cast)
  • The Outfit (Robert Duval)
  • Charlie Varrick
  • Scarface

They're elite. 

there should be one on bank robber movies. That would might be even harder to narrow down to a Top 5.

3 came to mind from the last 20 years,

  • Heat
  • The Town
  • Hell or High Water

but obviously there are some classics that go further back.

  • Bonnie & Clyde
  • Dog Day Afternoon

 

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Posted
On 2/3/2025 at 9:11 PM, MissingInAction said:

Apples to oranges.

Goodfellas for the low level machinations of the Mafia.

Godfather series for the high level origins which led to what we had with the five families.

Somos for the reality of cartel ruthlessness, and it's total control over every aspect of their territories. It's a limited series, but God damn it hits on every note 

Departed is Hollywood schlock.

My Bue Heaven.

What a nice day for a mow, ah?

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Posted
On 2/3/2025 at 5:17 PM, Celery Man said:

What the fuck is wrong with you people. It starts with Goodfellas.

 

honestly even Casino I’d put above The Untouchables.

Yeah it's funny how some of you worship this dipshit who not only doesn't start the list with Goodfellas but doesn't even put it in the top 5. I think he still has me on ignore because he's afraid of engaging in discourse with anyone capable of pulling his pants down. 

Goodfellas is my #1. It's better than The Godfather. However - I'd totally accept The Godfather as anyone's #1 were they to rank it that way. 

Those are the top two, though. I'm sure there's some contrarian asshole in here that's arguing Casino over those two but it's those two then it's everything else.

After that, let's talk. 

If you think The Departed is better than either you should be deported.

Posted
On 2/4/2025 at 8:24 AM, Dennis Taylor said:

Hilarious story Damon tells about the genius that is Jack

 

 

I remember seeing that and it was really cool.  Thanks for posting.

As for the Departed, I have watched it a few times and I would give it a 7.5-8.  Its really good but not great.  The last 30 minutes are really jumbled.  On the acting:

DiCaprio- A

Damon- A

Farmiga- A

Baldwin- A-

Nicholson- B. t just seemed like he was playing Jack Nicholson and not the character and his lines were just a series of one liners where some worked and some didn't.

Wahlberg- D. I have to actually fast forward through his scenes.  He literally can not act when he has to be serious and deliver tight dialogue.

Also, while not top 5, the Guy Ritchie movies that had gangster ties (Snatch, RocknRolla, etc) are really fun movies.

Posted (edited)
On 2/4/2025 at 2:47 PM, Michael Knight said:

Scarface has one of the worst montages in film history

 

 

Scarface was entertaining but hard to take seriously. It was a little too campy for my taste.

I'd list Godfathers I and II, Goodfellas, The Departed, One Upon a Time in America and Casino

Edited by Nole-4-Life

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