Every Martin Scorsese Film Ranked Worst To Best

With Mean Streets, Scorsese's knack for creating vitriolic, keenly observed crime dramas was born, and it's fair to say he got off to an impressive start. Not only does the movie feature Scorsese's first collaboration with Robert De Niro, but it also set the blueprint for the best films of his career.

It has all the stylistic flourishes you'd expect from a Scorsese picture: the unbelievably effective needle-drops, the uncompromising scenes of ultra-violence and an uncanny knack to put you in the head of its characters through inventive, subjective camera work (see Harvey Keitel's drunken stumble through a bar for a great example of this).

In Mean Streets, Charlie (Keitel) is stuck between his Catholicism and his work for his uncle mobster (Cesare Danova), whilst simultaneously battling for his dangerous friend Johnny's (De Niro) future.

It's a meaty movie, boosted to greatness by Keitel and De Niro's fully formed roles, but also by Scorsese's uncanny ability to not only create a thrilling drama, but to balance the story's thematic underpinnings in a perfectly ambiguous finale.

In many ways, this is right where Martin Scorsese's career really began, and it only got better from here.