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Best Criminal Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of criminal cinema — measured across 3,313 indexed frames from 39 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Criminal films over-index on handgun, fedora and trench coat — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Killing Them Softly (2012)

    Andrew DominikDP Greig FraserIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Three amateurs stickup a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse. Brad Pitt plays the hitman hired to track them down and restore order.

  2. 2

    Batman (1989)

    Tim BurtonDP Roger PrattIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    Gotham City. Crime boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance) effectively runs the town but there's a new crime fighter in town - Batman (Michael Keaton). Grissom's right-hand man is Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson), a brutal man who is not entirely sane... After falling out between the two Grissom has Napier set up with the Police and Napier falls to his apparent death in a vat of chemicals. However, he soon reappears as The Joker and starts a reign of terror in Gotham City. Meanwhile, reporter Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) is in the city to do an article on Batman. She soon starts a relationship with Batman's everyday persona, billionaire Bruce Wayne.

  3. 3

    Batman Forever (1995)

    Joel SchumacherDP Stephen GoldblattIMDb 5.5TMDB 5.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    The Dark Knight of Gotham City confronts a dastardly duo: Two-Face and the Riddler. Formerly District Attorney Harvey Dent, Two-Face incorrectly believes Batman caused the courtroom accident which left him disfigured on one side; he has unleashed a reign of terror on the good people of Gotham. Edward Nygma, computer-genius and former employee of millionaire Bruce Wayne, is out to get the philanthropist; as The Riddler he perfects a device for draining information from all the brains in Gotham, including Bruce Wayne's knowledge of his other identity. Batman/Wayne is/are the love focus of Dr. Chase Meridan. Former circus acrobat Dick Grayson, his family killed by Two-Face, becomes Wayne's ward and Batman's new partner Robin the Boy Wonder.

  4. 4

    The Usual Suspects

    Bryan SingerDP Newton Thomas SigelIMDb 8.5TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    Following a truck hijack in New York, five criminals are arrested and brought together for questioning. As none of them are guilty, they plan a revenge operation against the police. The operation goes well, but then the influence of a legendary mastermind criminal called Keyser Söze is felt. It becomes clear that each one of them has wronged Söze at some point and must pay back now. The payback job leaves 27 men dead in a boat explosion, but the real question arises now: Who actually is Keyser Söze?

  5. 5

    Strange Days (1995)

    Kathryn BigelowDP Matthew F. LeonettiIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1999, Los Angeles is racial war zone with the army and LSPD and SWAT officers fighting Afro-American people. The former cop Lenny Nero is a dealer of illegal recording in CDs that gives the memories and sensations of the recorder to the user. He buys the recordings from the supplier Tick; he misses his former mistress Faith, who was a hooker and now is a singer; his best friend is the private eye Max Peltier and the limousine driver Lornette 'Mace' Mason, who has unrequited love for him. Two days before the turn of the century, the black rapper Jeriko One is murdered. The hooker Iris seeks Lenny out but there is an incident and they do not talk to each other. However she drops a recording into Lenny's car while he unsuccessfully tries to meet Faith at a night-club. However her boyfriend Philo Gant does not let them talk. When Lenny learns that Iris was sadistically raped and killed, he gets involved in a sick scheme and discovers dirty hidden secrets.

  6. 6

    Dick Tracy (1990)

    Warren BeattyDP Vittorio StoraroIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    All Tess Trueheart wants is to settle down to a quiet life with her boyfriend, detective Dick Tracy. But there's something pretty rotten going on in town, with someone pretty rotten behind it, and Tracy has his hands full with the likes of villain Big Boy Caprice and with the almost irresistible Breathless Mahoney.

  7. 7

    Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

    Jean-Pierre MelvilleDP Henri DecaëIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    On the eve of his release after five years imprisoned, the thief Corey is contacted by one guard of the prison that offers him a jewelry heist. However Corey seeks out his former boss Rico and steals money from him. Rico sends two gangsters to hunt Corey down and retrieve the stolen amount. Meanwhile the criminal Vogel is transported by train by the Police Officer Mattei and succeeds to escape. Corey drives from Marseille to Paris and Vogel hides in the trunk of his car. Corey finds him but does not object to ride Vogel to Paris hidden in the trunk. When the gangsters sent by Rico cut in Corey's car, Vogel saves him from the criminals, but Corey loses the money. Without money, Corey decides to heist the jewelry with Vogel and invites the former police detective Jansen to team-up with them. The trio executes a perfect heist but Rico is seeking revenge and Mattei is an unethical but efficient police officer capable to use any means to resolve the case.

  8. 8

    The Many Saints of Newark (2021)

    Alan TaylorDP Kramer MorgenthauIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Young Anthony Soprano is growing up in one of the most tumultuous eras in Newark's history, becoming a man just as rival gangsters begin to rise up and challenge the all-powerful DiMeo crime family's hold over the increasingly race-torn city. Caught up in the changing times is the uncle he idolizes, Dickie Moltisanti, who struggles to manage both his professional and personal responsibilities and whose influence over his nephew will help make the impressionable teenager into the all-powerful mob boss we'll later come to know: Tony Soprano.

  9. 9

    Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

    Sion SonoDP Sohei TanikawaIMDb 4.2TMDB 5.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Set in the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town where a ruthless bank robber is sprung from jail by wealthy warlord The Governor, whose adopted granddaughter Bernice has gone missing. The Governor offers the prisoner his freedom in exchange for retrieving the runaway. Strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct within three days, the bandit sets off on a journey to find the young woman and his own path to redemption.

  10. 10

    The Bikeriders (2023)

    Jeff NicholsDP Adam StoneIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    After a chance encounter, headstrong Kathy is drawn to Benny, member of Midwestern motorcycle club the Vandals. As the club transforms into a dangerous underworld of violence, Benny must choose between Kathy and his loyalty to the club.

What criminal films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a criminal frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — handgun is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • handgun3.0×
  • fedora2.9×
  • trench coat2.7×
  • leather jacket2.7×
  • neon sign2.3×
  • suit2.1×
  • stubble1.8×
  • car1.8×

How criminal 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 criminal from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 49%low keyvs 40% baseline
  • 51%nightvs 43% baseline

What breaks the pattern

The Circle (2017) 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 3,313 frames from 39 films carrying the criminal 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/criminal

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