The 100 best crime movies of all time, according to critics
100. "Animal Kingdom" (2010)
99. "Paranoid Park" (2007)
Critic score: 83/100
User score: 6.6/10
What critics said: "Youth and death meet again in Gus Van Sant’s 'Paranoid Park,' a gorgeously stark, mesmerizingly elliptical story told in the same lyrical-prosaic style that has characterized his latest films." — Los Angeles Times
98. "Bus 174" (2002)
Critic score: 83/100
User score: 7.5/10
What critics said: "Tense, engrossing, and superbly structured, 'Bus 174' is not just unforgettable drama but a skillfully developed argument." — Village Voice
97. "Trainspotting" (1996)
Critic score: 83/100
User score: 8.9/10
What critics said: "It would be hard to imagine a movie about drugs, depravity, and all-around bad behavior more electrifying than 'Trainspotting.'" — Entertainment Weekly
96. "Adaptation." (2002)
Critic score: 83/100
User score: 8.1/10
What critics said: "'Adaptation,' like 'Being John Malkovich' before it, is far from a well-made film, even on its own flaky terms. But it's a brave, sometimes brilliant one, with a phantasmagoric ending, full of love and hope, that defeats prose description. Never was an adaptation more original." — The Wall Street Journal
95. "Rocco and His Brothers" (1960)
Critic score: 83/100
User score: 8.1/10
What critics said: "Neither the neighborhood intimacy of 'Mean Streets' nor the grandeur of the 'Godfather' movies is imaginable without Visconti's example. Its richness, though, is inexhaustible." — The New York Times
94. "Homicide" (1991)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "David Mamet's 'Homicide' is a brilliant muddle: compelling, exhilarating and, at the same time, profoundly dubious. Certainly there is greatness in it." — The Washington Post
93. "The Dark Knight" (2008)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 8.9/10
What critics said: "Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind." — The New York Times
92. "Volver" (2006)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 8.5/10
What critics said: "Part noir-comedy, part ghost story, but it's mostly a potent reflection on how where we come from shapes us, in ways we can't understand until we've been away for a long, long while." — Salon
91. "Graduation" (2017)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 8.5/10
What critics said: "An intricate, deeply intelligent film, and a bleak picture of a state of national depression in Romania, where the 90s generation hoped they would have a chance to start again." — The Guardian
90. "Looper" (2012)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 8.2/10
What critics said: "A remarkable feat of imagination and execution, entertaining from start to finish, even as it asks the audience to contemplate how and why humanity keeps making the same rotten mistakes." — The AV Club
89. "Mystic River" (2003)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 7.0/10
What critics said: "So incrementally does Eastwood's film build toward what seems like an inevitable resolution that when it concludes, you're sucker-punched. You haven't been watching a police procedural, but a Greek tragedy. You haven't been watching a drama about the catharsis of vigilantism, but sitting vigil for a community diminished, and permanently damaged, by violence." — Philadelphia Inquirer
88. "Lantana" (2001)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "Elegant but never overstated, sinister but never coldhearted, this is a note-perfect masterwork on a modest, human scale." — Salon
87. "The Man Without a Past" (2003)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "The revered Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki has hit on a way to give you grim social realism and movie-ish sentimentality in one fell swoop." — Slate
86. "Revanche" (2009)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 8.1/10
What critics said: "Mr. Spielmann's film is full of surprises and, in its distinctive way, full of life." — The Wall Street Journal
85. "The Big Risk" (1960)
Critic score: 84/100
User score: 7.3/10
What critics said: "A tough and touching exploration of honor and friendship among thieves." — The New York Times
84. "Out of Sight" (1998)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: 8.6/10
What critics said: "Reveals Soderbergh in peak form, as he endows Leonard’s postmodern yarn with a meticulously detailed mise en scene that helps each member of his terrific ensemble soar." — Variety
83. "Grisibi" (1954)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "A wonderful treasure from the seemingly inexhaustible cornucopia of crackling French crime dramas." — Los Angeles Times
82. "The Old Man and the Gun" (2018)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "Eschews pastiche for a sweet, affable character study that resurrects Redford’s original star power with a wet kiss. The entire picture amounts to a low-key cinematic resurrection." — IndieWire
81. "The Last Seduction" (1994)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: 8.5/10
What critics said: "A devilishly entertaining crime story with a heroine who must be seen to be believed, is as satisfying an ensemble piece as 'Red Rock West.'" — The New York Times
80. "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: 8.8/10
What critics said: "Under Jonathan Demme's masterful cinematic surgery, we get into Lecter's twisted skull and, through this outrageous descent, we come to see this sinister in the everyday." — The Hollywood Reporter
79. "Unforgiven" (1992)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: 8.4/10
What critics said: "A sombre, insightful, genre-reinventing western, directed by a filmmaker acutely aware of the western’s history, its limitations and the dubious truths of its legends." — The Telegraph
78. "Fargo" (1996)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: 8.8/10
What critics said: "Rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen." — Chicago Sun-Times
77. "The Departed" (2006)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "A triumphant revisiting of territory in which Scorsese is an unchallenged master -- the crime drama." — Premiere
76. "Tales of the Grim Sleeper" (2014)
Critic score: 85/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "The film is an appropriately dour and intense indictment of a law-enforcement community that did not value the lives of some victims enough to devote anything but the slimmest of resources to tracking their killer down." — The Dissolve
75. "Widows" (2018)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "Led by a magnificent Viola Davis, the cast is ridiculously stacked. The action is tremendous. And the ultimate message – that nothing comes for free in America – is devastating in its swift brutality." — The Globe and Mail
74. "Baby Driver" (2017)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 7.7/10
What critics said: "An awe-inspiring piece of filmmaking from Edgar Wright that plays out as a musical through the lens of an action thriller. Sweet, funny and utterly original — you won’t see a film like it this year." — Empire
73. "Sweet Sixteen" (2003)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 8.4/10
What critics said: "It's one of the most emotional and compelling the filmmaker has ever made. Confident, uncompromising and blisteringly realistic, 'Sweet Sixteen' is a gritty and immediate film yet it goes right to the emotions." — Los Angeles Times
72. "The Player" (1992)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 8.0/10
What critics said: "Michael Tolkin's script abounds in such cynical wisdom, but it never loses an appreciation for the grace with which these snakes consume their victims." — Time
71. "This Is England" (2007)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 7.7/10
What critics said: "The movie is taut, tense, relentless. It shows why Shaun feels he needs to belong to a gang, what he gets out of it and how it goes wrong." — Chicago Sun-Times
70. "The Grifters" (1990)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 8.9/10
What critics said: "Not only captured the bleak qualities of the old film noir melodramas but supplied an undercurrent that is as sly as it is unsettling." — San Francisco Chronicle
69. "Traffic" (2000)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 8.9/10
What critics said: "A flat-out electrifying experience." — Philadelphia Inquirer
68. "Drug War" (2013)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 7.1/10
What critics said: "The film is a singularly huge, relentless, all-encompassing set piece that mutates and spasms with terrifying lack of foresight. It's all business, business, business." — Slant Magazine
67. "Deliver Us from Evil" (2006)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 8.1/10
What critics said: "Amy Berg's riveting documentary, tracks O'Grady's predatory trail from San Andreas, Calif., to Ireland, where he is now living on a church pension that was apparently meant to buy his silence." — New York Daily News
66. "In the Bedroom" (2001)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 7.2/10
What critics said: "The surehandedly wrought, beautifully acted, almost unbearably tense 'In the Bedroom' is a rare film, not to be missed." — Time Out London
65. "Easy Rider" (1969)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 7.5/10
What critics said: "Fonda and Hopper’s now-classic film hit the old guard with the force of a rifle shot to the head." — Austin Chronicle
64. "Boys Don't Cry" (1999)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 7.6/10
What critics said: "A haunting, superbly made film. But it's also an unrelentingly sad and depressing experience." — New York Post
63. "To Die For" (1995)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 8.8/10
What critics said: "Kidman grabs center stage and never relinquishes the position. Playing mercilessly against her pinup girl image, she's an unforgettable, comic archetype—a more slapsticky corollary to William Hurt's bumbling, handsome newscaster in 'Broadcast News.'" — The Washington Post
62. "Dreamcatcher" (2015)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 6.1/10
What critics said: "Just as Brenda lives by a credo never to judge another woman, so too does the film, which creates an uplifting portrait of redemption and acceptance." — The Hollywood Reporter
61. "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: 8.6/10
What critics said: "A masterly reconstruction of a Brooklyn bank siege on August 22, 1972, built around arguably Al Pacino's finest screen performance." — The Telegraph
60. "The Murder of Fred Hampton" (1971)
Critic score: 86/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "It’s the rare film that decades later can seem as timely as it was the day it came out. The searing documentary 'The Murder of Fred Hampton' is such a film." — Los Angeles Times
59. "Maria Full of Grace" (2004)
Critic score: 87/100
User score: 2.6/10
What critics said: "Disturbing. It is impossible to sit through Maria Full of Grace and not be affected by the circumstances of the characters. For that, the credit must go to Marston and his actors." — ReelViews
58. "Serpico" (1973)
Critic score: 87/100
User score: 8.7/10
What critics said: "It is galvanizing because of Al Pacino's splendid performance in the title role and because of the tremendous intensity that Mr. Lumet brings to this sort of subject." — The New York Times
57. "One False Move" (1992)
Critic score: 87/100
User score: 7.4/10
What critics said: "Mixing moments of genuine terror with offbeat comedy, writers Tom Epperson and Thornton have created a script that jumps along wih the energy of 'In Cold Blood.'" — Chicago Tribune
56. "The Fugitive" (1993)
Critic score: 87/100
User score: 8.8/10
What critics said: "For dynamite suspense loaded with thrills and wicked fun, you can’t beat 'The Fugitive' — the summer’s best action blaster." — Rolling Stone
55. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962)
Critic score: 87/100
User score: 8.6/10
What critics said: "'To Kill A Mockingbird' is a product of American realism, and it is a rare and worthy treasure." — The Hollywood Reporter
54. "Gomorrah" (2009)
Critic score: 87/100
User score: 7.1/10
What critics said: "Probably the bleakest, least sentimental study of the Mafia in Italian or American film history." — Time
53. "Museo" (2018)
Critic score: 87/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "It’s an endlessly entertaining, challenging investigation of history that confirms Ruizpalacios’ status as the next big thing in Mexican cinema." — The Playlist
52. "Sweet Country" (2018)
Critic score: 87/100
User score: 7.8/10
What critics said: "This shrewdly observed story asks another question: Is civilization possible in a nation where discrimination has such deep roots? In 'Sweet Country,' the answer arrives with a tough fatalism." — The Washington Post
51. "Hell or High Water" (2016)
Critic score: 88/100
User score: 8.2/10
What critics said: "A thrillingly good movie — a crackerjack drama of crime, fear, and brotherly love set in a sun-roasted, deceptively sleepy West Texas that feels completely exotic for being so authentic." — Variety
50. "Mafioso" (1962)
Critic score: 88/100
User score: 7.1/10
What critics said: "A small comic masterpiece that dares to deal with that of which many Sicilians dare not speak: the Mafia." — TV Guide
49. "Band of Outsiders" (1964)
Critic score: 88/100
User score: 7.2/10
What critics said: "Easily the most brilliant of the genuflections bestowed on the American gangster movie by the French New Wave." — LA Weekly
48. "Thelma & Louise" (1991)
Critic score: 88/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "Sarandon and Davis give superb, wonderfully interactive performances: funky, fierce, funny and poignant." — Newsweek
47. "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (2017)
Critic score: 88/100
User score: 7.7/10
What critics said: "While the film continues almost throughout to generate great whoops of shocking laughter, it's the notes of genuine sorrow, compassion and contrition that resonate." — The Hollywood Reporter
46. "Strangers on a Train" (1951)
Critic score: 88/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "Intensely enjoyable--in some ways the best of Hitchcock's American films." — The New Yorker
45. "Capote" (2005)
Critic score: 88/100
User score: 7.8/10
What critics said: "A fascinating and fine-grained reconstruction of that period in its subject's life, a time when he (Capote) pursued literary glory and flirted with moral ruin." — The New York Times
44. "On the Waterfront" (1954)
Critic score: 88/100
User score: 8.8/10
What critics said: "It's hard to deny that Marlon Brando's performance as a dock worker and ex-fighter who finally decides to rat on his gangster brother (Rod Steiger) is pretty terrific." — Chicago Reader
43. "Piccadilly" (1929)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "As casually insensitive and careless as you might expect from a film of this era, but it's also surprisingly crafty about finding ways to incite discussion." — Boston Globe
42. "Quai des Orfèvres" (1947)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "A gorgeous flirt of a murder movie." — Baltimore Sun
41. "Goodfellas" (1990)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: 8.9/10
What critics said: "Ferocious brutality is presented without commentary or judgment, yet with unmistakable moral understanding and vision." — San Francisco Chronicle
40. "In Cold Blood" (1967)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: 7.9/10
What critics said: "Excellent quasidocumentary, which sends shivers down the spine." — The New York Times
39. "Gangs of Wasseypur" (2015)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: 8.6/10
What critics said: "The love child of Bollywood and Hollywood, 'Gangs of Wasseypur' is a brilliant collage of genres, by turns pulverizing and poetic in its depiction of violence." — Variety
38. "Man on Wire" (2008)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "Thanks to Marsh's sensitive storytelling, 'Man on Wire' manages to put Petit's performance into another, more ineffable realm: What began as a caper turned into poetry, and poetry became a prayer." — The Washington Post
37. "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "As incisive as it is thrilling, Carpenter’s film is also gorgeous. Carpenter’s imagery is a thing of propulsive beauty that both enhances suspense and expresses his characters’ ever-changing relations to one another. It’s a fleet, ferocious piece of genre craftsmanship." — The AV Club
36. "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" (1970)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: 8.0/10
What critics said: "A provocative political thriller that is as troubling today as when it came out in 1970. Maybe more so." — Los Angeles Times
35. "The Act of Killing" (2013)
Critic score: 89/100
User score: 8.4/10
What critics said: "The resulting film is bizarre to the point of trippiness, yet it’s one of the most lucid portraits of evil I’ve ever seen." — Vulture
34. "American Hustle" (2013)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 7.3/10
What critics said: "For some, the silver linings in Russell’s movies represent a failure to embrace darkness. I see them as a humanist’s act of resistance. That’s why 'American Hustle' ranks with the year’s best movies. It gets under your skin." — Rolling Stone
33. "Capturing the Friedmans" (2003)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 8.0/10
What critics said: "An extraordinary film; it may be the most haunting documentary since 'Crumb.'" — Entertainment Weekly
32. "United 93" (2006)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 7.6/10
What critics said: "An unflinching, powerfully visceral and haunting portrait of the tragic events aboard one of the terrorist-commandeered flights on the fateful morning of Sept. 11, 2001." — USA Today
31. "Dirty Harry" (1971)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 8.5/10
What critics said: "Try to get Siegel’s masterful camera rise out of your head: gun-happy Harry looming over his jabbering perp, who screams like a stuck pig as the shot recedes high into a dense night fog. This is not a cop film. It’s a monster movie." — Time Out
30. "A Brighter Summer Day" (1991)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 8.5/10
What critics said: "Yang's anti-nostalgic slice of 1960s Taipei life suggests a Tolstoy-size expansion of the ballads from Bruce Springsteen's 'Darkness on the Edge of Town.'" — Village Voice
29. "A Prophet" (2010)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 8.6/10
What critics said: "Audiard delivers on and exceeds the promise he evinced in that earlier film, drawing viewers into the densely layered, ruthless ecology of a French prison and, against all odds, making them not mind staying there awhile." — The Washington Post
28. "L.A. Confidential" (1997)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 9.0/10
What critics said: "A movie bull's-eye: noir with an attitude, a thriller packing punches. It gives up its evil secrets with a smile." — Chicago Tribune
27. "The Godfather: Part II" (1974)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 9.0/10
What critics said: "It is even better than the first film, and has the greatest single final scene in Hollywood history, a real coup de cinéma." — The Guardian
26. "The Crying Game" (1992)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 7.8/10
What critics said: "Persistently upends expectations without insult, as it pulls you into a netherworld filled with yearning, whimsy, and danger." — The Wall Street Journal
25. "13th" (2016)
Critic score: 90/100
User score: 7.9/10
What critics said: "A searing and pivotal documentary about the prison-industrial complex, Ava DuVernay's 'The 13th' is a truly frightening film that galvanizes its viewers to action." — We Got This Covered
24. "No Country for Old Men" (2007)
Critic score: 91/100
User score: 7.8/10
What critics said: "Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel is an indisputably great movie, at this point the year's very best." — Rolling Stone
23. "The Ladykillers" (1955)
Critic score: 91/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "This sinister black comedy of murder accelerates until it becomes a grotesque fantasy of murder. The actors seem to be having a boisterous good time getting themselves knocked off." — The New Yorker
22. "Le Cercle Rouge" (1970)
Critic score: 91/100
User score: 8.2/10
What critics said: "The antidote to every square tough-guy caper you've ever seen, and the inspiration for many great ones. It is an existential imperative to seek out a showing and burn rubber to get there, preferably in an excellent car." — Entertainment Weekly
21. "Cool Hand Luke" (1967)
Critic score: 91/100
User score: 9.3/10
What critics said: "Paul Newman gives one of his best performances in this prison film, where he inspires life in to his fellow inmates. Has something important to say with several memorable moments and a superb supporting cast." — Empire
20. "Tower" (2016)
Critic score: 92/100
User score: 7.8/10
What critics said: "Through the recollections of witnesses and victims, the film simultaneously builds a present-tense narrative while portraying the terrifying resilience of memory and trauma." — Village Voice
19. "Werckmeister Harmonies" (2001)
Critic score: 92/100
User score: 8.0/10
What critics said: "An indelible statement on loneliness and spiritual thirst." — San Francisco Chronicle
18. "Chinatown" (1974)
Critic score: 92/100
User score: 8.9/10
What critics said: "The film holds you, in a suffocating way. Polanski never lets the story tell itself. It's all over-deliberate, mauve, nightmarish; everyone is yellow-lacquered, and evil runs rampant. You don't care who is hurt, since everything is blighted. And yet the nastiness has a look, and a fascination." — The New Yorker
17. "Brother's Keeper" (1992)
Critic score: 92/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "A celebration of brotherly love in the form of a documentary about a possible mercy killing. It explores, with mercy and compassion, the paradoxes inherent to the concept of mercy killing, a crime of love rather than hate." — The AV Club
16. "Badlands" (1973)
Critic score: 93/100
User score: 8.7/10
What critics said: "One of the great banality-of-evil films." — Boston Globe
15. "Shoplifters" (2018)
Critic score: 93/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "In 'Shoplifters,' Kore-eda dramatizes the insidious and relativistic ordinariness of poverty." — Slant Magazine
14. "Elevator to the Gallows" (1961)
Critic score: 94/100
User score: 7.6/10
What critics said: "Moreau's nocturnal wanderings are made unbearably poignant by an exquisite Miles Davis jazz score that became famous in its own right." — The New Yorker
13. "Carlos" (2010)
Critic score: 94/100
User score: 7.8/10
What critics said: "Hypnotic and sprawling five-hour-plus piece of cinematic genius." — Los Angeles Times
12. "Pulp Fiction" (1994)
Critic score: 94/100
User score: 9.0/10
What critics said: "Like 'Citizen Kane,' 'Pulp Fiction' is constructed in such a nonlinear way that you could see it a dozen times and not be able to remember what comes next." — Chicago Sun-Times
11. "Taxi Driver" (1976)
Critic score: 94/100
User score: 7.1/10
What critics said: "The blend of Schrader's script, Scorsese's direction and De Niro's performance is both riveting and unnerving. A film that will stay with you forever." — Empire
10. "Double Indemnity" (1944)
Critic score: 95/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "Film noir is the most intoxicating of Hollywood cocktails, and none is more potent than 'Double Indemnity.'" — The Telegraph
9. "L'Argent" (1984)
Critic score: 95/100
User score: 9.4/10
What critics said: "It goes beyond the impartiality of journalism. It has the manner of an official report on the spiritual state of a civilization for which there is no hope." — The New York Times
8. "Mean Streets" (1973)
Critic score: 96/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "Martin Scorsese’s 'Mean Streets' isn’t so much a gangster movie as a perceptive, sympathetic, finally tragic story about how it is to grow up in a gangster environment." — Chicago Sun-Times
7. "The French Connection" (1971)
Critic score: 96/100
User score: 8.5/10
What critics said: "There is only one problem with the excitement generated by this film. After it is over, you will walk out of the theater and, as I did, curse the tedium of your own life. I kept looking for someone who I could throw up against a wall." — Chicago Tribune
6. "12 Angry Men" (1957)
Critic score: 96/100
User score: 9.4/10
What critics said: "A penetrating, sensitive, and sometimes shocking dissection of the hearts and minds of men who obviously are something less than gods. It makes for taut, absorbing, and compelling drama that reaches far beyond the close confines of its jury room setting." — The New York Times
5. "Rififi" (1956)
Critic score: 97/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "Among the picture's many surprises is a superb robbery scene filmed in a near-total silence that contrasts exhilaratingly with the noisy flamboyance of more recent films in this venerable genre." — Christian Science Monitor
4. "Pépé le Moko" (1937)
Critic score: 98/100
User score: 5.3/10
What critics said: "Beautifully crafted, movingly acted, still involving and entertaining, this is just the kind of film people are talking about when they say they don't make them like this anymore." — Los Angeles Times
3. "Touch of Evil" (1958)
Critic score: 99/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: "As masterful as Welles's filming is, what makes 'Touch of Evil' a staggering masterpiece is the global quality of his style, which causes every image to echo almost every other in the film." — Chicago Reader
2. "The Night of the Hunter" (1955)
Critic score: 99/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "It’s the most haunted and dreamlike of all American films, a gothic backwoods ramble with the Devil at its heels." — Time Out London
1. "The Godfather" (1972)
Critic score: 100/100
User score: 9.2/10
What critics said: "An intricately constructed gem that simultaneously kicks ass." — Austin Chronicle
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