10 Best Mob Movies That Aren't The Godfather Or Goodfellas

The mob movies and crime genre are enjoying a cultural moment in 2026, with new films like Crime 101 and The Immortal Man both enjoying great success. Several of the past movies in the genre are by directors who studied under Coppola and Scorsese, or in some cases, repeat movies by the directors themselves. With other names like the Coen Brothers and David Cronenberg, these remain some of the best crime movies in history.

Donnie Brasco (1997)

Donnie Brasco follows in the footsteps of Goodfellas by showing a man inside the mob who ends up bringing it down from within. In this case, it's not a mobster turned informer, but instead an FBI agent sent undercover. Johnny Depp is Donnie Brasco, while Al Pacino is aging wiseguy Lefty Ruggiero, both men based on real-life figures of the downfall of the Bonanno crime family.

Based on the book by Joe Pistone (the real-life agent who used the alias Donnie Brasco), the movie shows the emotional toll that going undercover takes on the cop, and the struggles when he starts to find friendship with one of the men he is asked to bring down. This was just as influential for The Sopranos as The Godfather was, and while it lacks the operatic scale of Goodfellas, it is much more emotionally effective.

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Once Upon a Time in America is a Sergio Leone epic that spans over five decades of the Jewish-American mob life in New York. Robert De Niro stars as David "Noodles" Aaronson, while James Woods is his best friend, Max. This is as epic as they come, checking in at over four hours in running time in its restored cut. It has an 87% Rotten Tomatoes score and stands up with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as one of Leone's masterpieces.

In this movie, Leone treats the mob life as a grand tragedy, similar to what Coppola did with his Godfather franchise. However, he adds a touch of the hypnotic trance that the men involved must have felt as time began passing them by. It is more ambitious than The Godfather, but it is also important to realize that the expanded cut is the superior release because the theatrical cut loses most of its grandeur.

Mean Streets (1973)

Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas is considered one of the best mob movies of all time, and it should come as no surprise that he got his start making these kinds of movies. Scorsese enjoyed his breakthrough in 1973 with Mean Streets, a film on a much smaller scale than Goodfellas, but one that owes a lot more to Scorsese's influences from the 1930s, like Scarface and The Public Enemy.

Mean Streets was the starting point for crime dramas and mob movies in the 1970s, as Scorsese had a brilliant eye for how to shoot the film from the street level and add in some great needle-drop musical moments. It also launched the working relationship between Scorsese and Robert De Niro, as well as De Niro's entry into the world of gangster cinema.

Miller's Crossing (1990)

The Coen Brothers' early movies all showed their intense love for crime dramas, although many of them were filmed through the lens of dark comedies. However, in 1990, they became deadly serious with their mob movie, Miller's Crossing. This film starred Gabriel Byrne as Tom Reagan, the right-hand man for a mob boss named Leo (Albert Finney). The plot follows two warring crime factions.

Sitting at a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score, Miller's Crossing is directly influenced by crime novels, specifically Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key and Red Harvest. The entire complex plot, period dialogue, and beautiful cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld showed that the Coen Brothers were just as great at crime dramas as they were with absurdist comedy.

Road to Perdition (2002)

Sam Mendes was coming off his Oscar success with American Beauty when he directed a mob movie with the biggest actor of this generation and one of the greatest actors of the 20th century. Road to Perdition, based on Max Allan Collins' graphic novel, stars Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan, a mob enforcer for Paul Newman's John Rooney. However, when the mob kills Michael's family, it becomes a vengeance tale.

This is the perfect example of a mob movie set up like a Greek tragedy, with Rooney as a surrogate father for Michael, and Michael, who has to kill his father figure to protect his own son. Jude Law stars as a hitman hunting Michael down, while Daniel Craig and Stanley Tucci also have important roles. Newman earned his final Oscar nomination for his performance in Road to Perdition.

Eastern Promises (2007)

David Cronenberg took the idea of mob movies and turned them on their head with his 2007 release Eastern Promises. In this movie, Viggo Mortensen stars as Nikolai Luzhin, a driver climbing the ranks of a criminal organization. He then meets a midwife (Naomi Watts) who discovers a diary linking the mob to sex trafficking. Mortensen earned his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance.

There are so many great scenes in this mob movie, with the bathhouse scene one of the most memorable, as a naked Mortensen fights two Chechen assassins unarmed. It remains one of the most visceral fight scenes in mob movie history. This took the mob genre away from the Italians and brought in the Russian mafia, which created its own film vocabulary.

American Gangster (2007)

Denzel Washington earned high praise for his performance as Frank Lucas, a real-life Harlem drug kingpin who kept the streets safe while also ensuring that his criminal empire ran without a hitch. This was a rare movie where the mob boss was a strong and determined Black man, someone who cared as much for the people on the streets as he did for the rise of his criminal empire.

Washington's performance as Lucas, a man wearing a suit, attending church on Sundays, and helping the people in need, changes everything that most mob movies showed about the mafia bosses. American Gangster takes the epic scale of The Godfather and infuses it with a true-story structure to present something that lives in both worlds.

Casino (1995)

Martin Scorsese broke out with Mean Streets and created his masterpiece with Goodfellas, but he enjoyed an underrated success with his 1995 mob movie Casino. This movie shared several cast members with Goodfellas, as Robert De Niro took the lead role as casino boss Sam "Ace" Rothstein and Joe Pesci starred as his enforcer Nicky Santoro.

However, it was Sharon Stone who stole the show as Ginger McKenna, and she went on to earn an Oscar nomination for her performance. This was based on the nonfiction book by Nicholas Pileggi, and it seems like a take on Goodfellas, but in Las Vegas. However, it is bigger than that. It is longer than Goodfellas, more ambitious, and more interesting in how organized crime infiltrates other industries, this time with the casino industry.

Scarface (1983)

In 1983, Brian De Palma remade the classic 1932 Howard Hawks gangster movie Scarface, but took it in a bigger, more ambitious direction. Al Pacino starred as Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee who came to America seeking the American dream, only to rise from being a dishwasher to become one of Miami's most feared drug kingpins.

Montana is one of the most quoted characters in mob movie history, with "Say hello to my little friend" one of his most repeated lines. The Miami excess, giant mansions, and mountains of cocaine made the mob movie look more dangerous than ever before, and its loud action and violence push it into a far more theatrical direction than The Godfather and Goodfellas.

The Departed (2006)

Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas is considered his masterpiece, but the movie that he actually won an Oscar for was his 2006 mob movie, The Departed. While Goodfellas was based on a true story and Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, The Departed is a remake of a Hong Kong crime drama about a cop who goes undercover in the mob and a mobster who joins the police academy to become a dirty cop.

In some ways, The Departed faithfully remakes Infernal Affairs, but it also brings something new and different to the tale of the Boston police and the mob boss they want to bring down. It was also hugely successful, with Jack Nicholson starring as mob boss Frank Costello, based on real-life mob boss Whitey Bulger, and Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio as the two undercover turncoats.