The Greatest Crime Movies From Every Decade Of The Last 100 Years

1930s - The Public Enemy

If there was one actor who was synonymous with the gangster movies of Hollywood's Golden Era, it would be James Cagney. Any actor who played a gangster over the next five decades based their patterns of speech and movements on what Cagney so masterfully did in the 1930s.

It was four classic gangster movies that turned Cagney into a legend. In the 1930s, he starred in The Public Enemy (1931), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), and The Roaring Twenties (1939) before finishing up with White Heat in 1949. Of the 1930s films, it was The Public Enemy that was the decade's masterpiece.

Cagney played Tom Powers, a young Irish American who rose through the ranks of the Chicago mafia, making plenty of enemies along the way. This film showed the glamor of the rise to power, as well as what it looks like when the world crashes down around them. The last scene of this crime movie is still one of the genre’s most devastating.

1940s - Double Indemnity

Billy Wilder directed a lot of great movies over his career, but he had one film that defined the entire film noir genre. Double Indemnity stars Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who ends up involved in a terrible scheme when he explains the insurance rules about double indemnity to the wife of a wealthy man.

Barbara Stanwyck stars as Phyllis Dietrichson, a woman who plots a plan to have her husband die in what seems to be an accident, which will allow her to get double the life insurance policy. However, when things get complicated, Fred has to figure out what to do if Phyllis targets him next.

The movie is one of the best of Billy Wilder's career, which says a lot when looking at his output. From the masterful filmmaking to the incredible dialogue and very dark themes for the 1940s, this is the perfect film noir of that era.

1950s - The Asphalt Jungle

In the 1950s, film noir was still going strong, although it was about to give way to the French New Wave and similar other new genres of crime dramas. However, The Asphalt Jungle delivered what noir fans wanted, with a story that was both twisted and dark, and one that had characters all living morally grey existences.

The movie is a heist flick with Sam Jaffe starring as Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider, a man who has been freshly released from prison and who has plans for one more big heist now that he is free. He puts together his crew and plans out the heist, only for everything to go wrong.

The cast was great, with Sterling Hayden in the lead role as Dix Handley, the last man hired to help with the heist. This ended up as not only the best crime movie of the 1950s, but a film that influenced every heist movie that came out after it. It entered the Library of Congress's National Film Registry in 2008.

1960s - In The Heat Of The Night

In The Heat Of The Night was the crime movie that set the bar for the socially conscious thrillers that began to rise in the 1960s. Sidney Poitier stars as Virgil Tibbs, a homicide detective from Philadelphia who agrees to help a small-town police chief investigate a murder case.

However, he runs into trouble in small-town America, where most of the residents are racist, including Police Chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger). Racism is a big selling point of the movie, but as Tibbs shows his genius detective skills and starts to win over Gillespie, the movie really becomes a masterpiece.

The movie was a huge success, winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor (Steiger). It also received a TV series of the same name, which was a huge success in the 1980s.

1970s - The Godfather, Part II

Both Godfather movies could be added as the best crime films of the 1970s, but if only one were chosen, it has to be the sequel, The Godfather: Part II. The first movie was a masterpiece and cleaned up at the Oscars as Marlon Brando's Don Corleone's final days, and the downfall of his war hero son Michael played out masterfully.

However, the sequel, while just as long, was better paced and told a more in-depth story, as Michael's rise to power after his dad's death plays perfectly alongside the flashback scenes of the Don's rise to power, with Robert De Niro turning in a masterful performance as a young Marlon Brando.

The film was just as successful at the Oscars, nominated for 11 Oscars, and winning six, including Best Picture (the first sequel to ever win that honor), Best Director (Francis Ford Coppola), and Best Supporting Actor (De Niro). It remains one of the best gangster films ever made.

1980s - Scarface

The Scarface from the 1930s was a brilliant movie, with Paul Mini showing the world what a gangster in the movies looks like. While that Scarface movie was fantastic, the 1983 version remains one of the most iconic gangster films ever made. Muni was great in his role in the classic film, but Al Pacino was iconic in this movie.

Directed by Brian De Palma and written by Oliver Stone, this movie had Pacino star as Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee who arrives in Miami and becomes a powerful drug lord. This was a perfect crime movie because it showed his rise to power and his eventual, bloody downfall.

Scarface has become an iconic touchstone film that received negative reviews when released but was reappraised as a brilliant look at the criminal underworld. It has also become an iconic part of the hip-hop community and culture since its release.

1990s - Heat

While Al Pacino and Robert De Niro both starred in The Godfather Part II, they never shared a scene together because De Niro played in the scenes of a young Don Corleone while Pacino was Michael in modern-day scenes. It actually took two decades for the two Oscar-nominated actors to share a screen together.

Pacino was a cop who was hunting down a gang of notorious thieves, while De Niro played the leader of that gang. This was a story that was split between both sides, as the police and the thieves had their lives laid out, and that made the final confrontation mean so much more than normal crime movies.

The film also had a great supporting cast, and Val Kilmer stole every scene he was in as Chris Shiherlis. Directed by Michael Mann, this is not only his best movie but the one crime drama in the 1990s that almost everyone agrees is a genuine masterpiece.

2000s - No Country For Old Men

There were only two Western movies listed among the best films of the 21st century in a recent poll. These were There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. The impressive thing is that the second of those also doubles as the best crime movie of the 2000s, and nothing else comes close.

Josh Brolin is a small-town guy, down on his luck, who finds the remains of a shootout where a drug deal went wrong. Instead of reporting it, he finds the money still there and takes it all. This leads the mafia boss to send his main hitman (Javier Bardem) to get the money back and kill anyone involved.

The movie is a nihilistic look at a man who will kill anyone and everyone, even if they are innocent bystanders. It is also the story of what happens when a man decides to step out of line, even once, when a major crime organization is involved. The Coen Brothers' movie won Best Picture at the Oscars.

2010s - Sicario

Before he created the Yellowstone universe on television, Taylor Sheridan worked as a screenwriter for movies. When it came to all his projects, the best movie he was involved with was the 2015 crime thriller Sicario. What made that even better was that it was one of director Denis Villeneuve's (Dune) movies.

Sicario followed a joint task force run by the CIA, with Emily Blunt starring as Kate Macer, a woman who doesn't know how deep the corruption in her own agency goes. When they set out to apprehend a mafia lord operating on the border, she learns quickly that the United States doesn't care who they kill to achieve their goals.

This was a surprising success, with high critical reviews and even three Oscar nominations (Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Sound Editing). It was easy to see here why Villeneuve was about to explode in Hollywood and Sheridan was on the cusp of greatness as a writer.

2020s - Rebel Ridge

The best crime movie in the 2020s was not a theatrical release, but was instead a Netflix original. This movie was called Rebel Ridge and starred Aaron Paul as Terry Richmond, a Marine veteran who was going to bail his cousin out of jail. However, he is soon attacked by crooked police officers, who steal the money he had for the bail.

When the police won't help him get his money back, his brother ends up murdered while in jail, and Terry decides it is time to get revenge on the crooked cops, whom he blames for the entire situation. The corruption is so deep that the police even attack their own when they try to do the right thing.

Rebel Ridge went on to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie, and it has an incredibly high 96% Rotten Tomatoes score. This crime movie proved that Aaron Paul was a star on the rise, and it remains the best crime movie of the 2020s so far.