Best Con man Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of con man cinema — measured across 837 indexed frames from 12 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Con man films over-index on dress shirt, fedora and suit jacket — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Steven SpielbergDP Janusz KamińskiIMDb 8.1TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →
A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. An FBI agent makes it his mission to put him behind bars. But Frank not only eludes capture, he revels in the pursuit.
- 2
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Martin ScorseseDP Rodrigo PrietoIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) is Long Island penny stockbroker who serves almost two years in prison for refusing to co-operate in a huge 1990s securities fraud case that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including mob infiltration.
- 3
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Joel Coen, Ethan CoenDP Roger DeakinsIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
1949, Santa Rosa, California. A laconic, chain-smoking barber with fallen arches tells a story of a man trying to escape a humdrum life. It's a tale of suspected adultery, blackmail, foul play, death, Sacramento city slickers, racial slurs, invented war heroics, shaved legs, a gamine piano player, aliens, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Ed Crane cuts hair in his in-law's shop; his wife drinks and may be having an affair with her boss, Big Dave, who has $10,000 to invest in a second department store. Ed gets wind of a chance to make money in dry cleaning. Blackmail and investment are his opportunity to be more than a man no one notices. Settle in the chair and listen.
- 4
Focus (2015)
John Requa, Glenn FicarraDP Xavier GrobetIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Nicky Spurgeon is an extremely accomplished con man who takes an amateur con artist, Jess, under his wing. Nicky and Jess become romantically involved, and with Nicky's profession of being a liar and a cheater for a living, he realizes that deception and love are things that don't go together. They split, only to see each other three years later... And things get messy.
- 5
Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)
Steven SoderberghDP Steven SoderberghIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →
The last time we saw Danny Ocean's crew, they were paying back ruthless casino mogul Terry Benedict after stealing millions from him. However, it's been a while since they've come back together, which is all about to change. When one of their own, Reuben Tishkoff, builds a hotel with another casino owner, Willy Bank, the last thing he ever wanted was to get cut out of the deal personally by the loathsome Bank. Bank's attitude even goes so far as to finding the amusement in Tishkoff's misfortune when the double crossing lands Reuben in the hospital because of a heart attack. However, Danny and his crew won't stand for Bank and what he's done to a friend. Uniting with their old enemy Benedict, who himself has a vendetta against Bank, the crew is out to pull off a major plan; one that will unfold on the night Bank's newest hot spot opens up. They're not in this for the money, but for the revenge.
- 6
Paper Moon (1971)
Peter BogdanovichDP László KovácsIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Set in the midwest of the depression-era, Paper Moon follows Moses Pray and Addie Loggins - one a con artist, the other, the young girl who's the daughter of a woman who's just passed away. The pair meet when 'Mose' stops by the sparsely-attended funeral in Kansas of a woman he once knew (we never see her). In attendance, is the woman's young daughter, Addie, whom Moses agrees to transport to St Joseph, Mo -- for money, of course. Mose - an inveterate hustler, has been working ostensibly as a representative of the Kansas Bible Company - who picks his marks from the obits, and tries to sell - at exorbitant prices - the decedents' spouse the custom bible they'd previously ordered. Wise beyond her years, Addie picks up on Moses' grift, and very quickly, she and Mose become a team. Traveling from town to town, making money in every dishonest way imaginable, and looking for the ultimate score. The colorful characters they meet along the way make the film all the more interesting. One in particular - Miss Trixie Delight - an exotic dancer who Mose rescues from a traveling carnival and the girl who works for her, poor, suffering Imogene. Addie sees Miss Delight as a potential rival, and she concocts a plan with Imogene to free themselves of her. The film's peppered with regional dialogue, one of the most memorable line's uttered when Mose is forced to wrestle a backwoodsman in order to trade his new car for the hillbilly's battered old truck; "make him say calf-rope, Leroy!" one of the observers calls out. Paper Moon, directed by Peter Bogdonovich is adapted from the novel, "Addie Pray" (1971) by Joe David Brown.
- 7
The Brothers Bloom (2008)
Rian JohnsonDP Steve YedlinIMDb 6.7TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
The Brothers Bloom are the best con men in the world, swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of lust and intrigue. Now they've decided to take on one last job – showing a beautiful and eccentric heiress the time of her life with a romantic adventure that takes them around the world.
- 8
I Love You Phillip Morris (2010)
Glenn Ficarra, John RequaDP Xavier GrobetIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Steven Russell leads a seemingly average life – an organ player in the local church, happily married to Debbie, and a member of the local police force. That is until he has a severe car accident that leads him to the ultimate epiphany: he’s gay and he’s going to live life to the fullest – even if he has to break the law to do it. Taking on an extravagant lifestyle, Steven turns to cons and fraud to make ends meet and is eventually sent to the State Penitentiary where he meets the love of his life, a sensitive, soft-spoken man named Phillip Morris. His devotion to freeing Phillip from jail and building the perfect life together prompts him to attempt (and often succeed at) one impossible con after another.
What con man films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a con man frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — dress shirt is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- dress shirt4.2×
- fedora4.0×
- suit jacket3.4×
- tie2.8×
- necktie2.4×
- blazer1.8×
- table1.6×
How con man films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate con man from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 15%high keyvs 12% baseline
- 84%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
The Frighteners (1996) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 837 frames from 12 films carrying the con man label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/con-man
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