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Best Mafia Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of mafia cinema — measured across 1,971 indexed frames from 27 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Mafia films over-index on handgun, fedora and dress shirt — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Reservoir Dogs (1992)

    Quentin TarantinoDP Andrzej SekulaIMDb 8.3TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    Six thugs, who are strangers to each other, are hired by a crime boss, Joe Cabot, to carry out a diamond robbery. Right at the outset, they are given false names with the intention that they won't get too close and will concentrate on the job instead. They are completely sure that the robbery is going to be a success. But, when the police show up right at the time and the site of the robbery, panic spreads amongst the group members, and two of them are killed in the subsequent shootout, along with a few policemen and civilians. When the remaining people assemble at the premeditated rendezvous point (a warehouse), they begin to suspect that one of them is an undercover cop.

  2. 2

    The Godfather (1972)

    Francis Ford CoppolaDP Gordon WillisIMDb 9.2TMDB 8.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    The Godfather "Don" Vito Corleone is the head of the Corleone mafia family in New York. He is at the event of his daughter's wedding. Michael, Vito's youngest son and a decorated WWII Marine is also present at the wedding. Michael seems to be uninterested in being a part of the family business. Vito is a powerful man, and is kind to all those who give him respect but is ruthless against those who do not. But when a powerful and treacherous rival wants to sell drugs and needs the Don's influence for the same, Vito refuses to do it. What follows is a clash between Vito's fading old values and the new ways which may cause Michael to do the thing he was most reluctant in doing and wage a mob war against all the other mafia families which could tear the Corleone family apart.

  3. 3

    Casino (1995)

    Martin ScorseseDP Robert RichardsonIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    This Martin Scorsese film depicts the Janus-like quality of Las Vegas--it has a glittering, glamorous face, as well as a brutal, cruel one. Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro, mobsters who move to Las Vegas to make their mark, live and work in this paradoxical world. Seen through their eyes, each as a foil to the other, the details of mob involvement in the casinos of the 1970s and '80s are revealed. Ace is the smooth operator of the Tangiers casino, while Nicky is his boyhood friend and tough strongman, robbing and shaking down the locals. However, they each have a tragic flaw--Ace falls in love with a hustler, Ginger, and Nicky falls into an ever-deepening spiral of drugs and violence.

  4. 4

    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.

  5. 5

    The Departed (2006)

    Martin ScorseseDP Michael BallhausIMDb 8.5TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    In this crime-action tour de force, the South Boston state police force is waging war on Irish-American organized crime. Young undercover cop Billy Costigan is assigned to infiltrate the mob syndicate run by gangland chief Frank Costello. While Billy quickly gains Costello's confidence, Colin Sullivan, a hardened young criminal who has infiltrated the state police as an informer for the syndicate, is rising to a position of power in the Special Investigation Unit. Each man becomes deeply consumed by their double lives, gathering information about the plans and counter-plans of the operations they have penetrated. But when it becomes clear to both the mob and the police that there is a mole in their midst, Billy and Colin are suddenly in danger of being caught and exposed to the enemy - and each must race to uncover the identity of the other man in time to save themselves. But is either willing to turn on their friends and comrades they've made during their long stints undercover?

  6. 6

    Goodfellas (1990)

    Martin ScorseseDP Michael BallhausIMDb 8.7TMDB 8.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Henry Hill recounts his life in the mob, from his teenage years to his eventual downfall. Immersed in organized crime, he experiences wealth, power, and violence alongside friends Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito. The film blends crime, drama, and dark humor, exploring loyalty, ambition, betrayal, and the consequences of criminal life. Themes of family, morality, and the fleeting nature of power underpin the story.

  7. 7

    American Hustle (2013)

    David O. RussellDP Linus SandgrenIMDb 7.2TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    A fictional film set in the alluring world of one of the most stunning scandals to rock our nation, American Hustle tells the story of brilliant con man Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), who along with his equally cunning and seductive British partner Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) is forced to work for a wild FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia that's as dangerous as it is enchanting. Jeremy Renner is Carmine Polito, the passionate, volatile, New Jersey political operator caught between the con-artists and Feds. Irving's unpredictable wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) could be the one to pull the thread that brings the entire world crashing down.

  8. 8

    Road To Perdition (2002)

    Sam MendesDP Conrad HallIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    1931. Mike Sullivan and Connor Rooney are two henchmen of elderly downstate IL-based Irish-American mobster John Rooney, Connor's father. In many respects, John treats Mike more as his son, who he raised as his own after Mike was orphaned, than the volatile Connor, who nonetheless sees himself as the heir apparent to the family business. One evening, Mike's eldest son, twelve year old Michael Sullivan Jr., who has no idea what his father does for a living, witnesses Connor and his father gun down an associate and his men, the situation gone wrong initiated from an action by Connor. Caught witnessing the incident, Michael is sworn to secrecy about what he saw. Regardless, Connor, not wanting any loose ends, makes an attempt to kill Mike, his wife and their two sons. Mike and the surviving members of his family know that they need to go on the run as Connor, who has gone into hiding, will be protected through mob loyalty, especially by John, who cannot turn on his own flesh and blood. Still, Mike has to figure out a way for retribution for what Connor did, while still protecting him and his family, not only from Connor, but from John and his fellow associates. Through it all, Mike wants those in his family that had no say in what he chose as a living, to have some redemption for their eternal souls.

  9. 9

    The Irishman (2019)

    Martin ScorseseDP Rodrigo PrietoIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran is a man with a lot on his mind. The former labor union high official and hitman, learned to kill serving in Italy during the Second World War. He now looks back on his life and the hits that defined his mob career, maintaining connections with the Bufalino crime family. In particular, the part he claims to have played in the disappearance of his life-long friend, Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who mysteriously vanished in late July 1975 at the age of 62.

  10. 10

    Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

    Jim JarmuschDP Robby MüllerIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    A hitman who lives by the code of the samurai, works for the mafia and finds himself in their crosshairs when his recent job doesn't go according to plan. Now he must find a way to defend himself and his honor while retaining the code he lives by.

What mafia films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a mafia 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.

  • handgun3.8×
  • fedora3.5×
  • dress shirt3.4×
  • suit jacket2.8×
  • necktie2.7×
  • men2.5×
  • telephone2.5×
  • suit2.5×

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

  • 85%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014) 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 1,971 frames from 27 films carrying the mafia 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/mafia

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