10 Best Gangster Movies (Not Made By Martin Scorsese)

Crime doesn't pay. No really, it doesn't.

If there's one thing Martin Scorsese knows how to do almost flawlessly, it's that he can make you want to watch films about bad people. From the sociopath Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver to the sex, power and money-obsessed Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese's films are unashamedly intent on making you feel something (sympathy, hate or something else, none are unwarranted) for them. There's little wonder then, that Scorsese's most famous films are all about gangsters. After all, what better way to make a compelling narrative about disreputable individuals than to set it in the world of organised crime. The genre doesn't belong to Mr. Scorsese though, and we all do ourselves a disservice if we focus only on the works of one person, however great they may be. Scorsese's gangster films almost exclusively deal with Italian/Irish American mobsters and crime families - but they aren't necessary to make a great gangster film. A lone wolf concerned with only numero uno like Michael from Breathless can be just as unsettling as the Italian Mob, purely because such a person answers to nobody. The same goes for the famous antics of Bonnie & Clyde, criminals that had no criminal hierarchy to speak of. But what does a gangster film have to do to make you sit up and pay attention to the horrific crimes unfolding before you? Hopefully, this list will satiate your lust for some good, old fashioned Mob action, and provide some examples of brilliant gangster films that weren't guided by the hand of Scorsese.
Contributor
Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.