Every Martin Scorsese Movie Ranked Worst To Best

Mean Streets was the film that started it all, launching Scorsese from the clutches of Roger Corman and shoestring budgets to the very top of the Hollywood New Wave food chain. Having recently celebrated its landmark 50th anniversary, this sin-filled, deeply personal drama feels more urgent than ever before.

Concerning a disillusioned young criminal (a career-best Harvey Keitel) torn between his faith, his mobster uncle (Cesare Danova), and a reckless, self-destructive friend (Robert De Niro, in his Scorsese debut), Mean Streets is a vitriolic thriller equally dark and thematically dense, all the way to its breathtakingly ambiguous finale.

Dripping with dread and an urgent sense of tragedy, Scorsese's great hit dives deep into Catholic guilt, the hopelessness of crime, and the doom of young ambition with powerfully lived-in characters, and a confidence most filmmakers would sell their souls to replicate.