10 Best Gangster Movies Like Goodfellas Ranked, Including Casino & Donnie Brasco

Published Oct 10, 2026, 6:55 AM EDT

Senior Music Editor at Screen Rant, Sarah's love of sound and story drive the beat. A globetrotting brand whisperer and award-winning journalist, she’s built cross-cultural narratives around the world—but music has always been her true north. She launched DJ Mag North America, successfully introducing the iconic UK brand to the U.S. market. Previously, she carved a space for EDM inside the pages of VIBE, blending electronic and hip-hop culture long before it was trendy.
 

Goodfellas makes the gangster life look intoxicating, even as everything about it becomes increasingly toxic.

Henry Hill is never sold as a hero, and Martin Scorsese never asks us to admire what he does. Still, the movie understands exactly how seductive his world can look. Think of the Copacabana entrance: Henry skips the line, walks Karen through the kitchen, slips cash into waiting hands, and somehow a table appears for them right in front of the stage. Of course she is impressed. That ability to make the attraction believable without endorsing it is part of why Goodfellas cast such a long shadow over the gangster movies that followed.

The movies in that shadow do not all look or feel like Goodfellas. Some barely bother with glamour at all, while others lean into it hard. Casino practically sparkles with money, Vegas, and Sharon Stone before everything starts curdling, which is probably why the argument over whether it is Goodfellas’ worthy companion or simply too similar has followed it for decades.

Each movie here finds its own way into the same fascination, whether the pull comes from money, access, loyalty, or simply being admitted into a world most people will never see from the inside. The higher a movie ranks, the more completely it captures that Goodfellas tension between the allure of criminal life and what it eventually costs the people living it. We already know these stories rarely end well for the gangsters. The audience usually has a much better time.

Gangster Movies Have Plenty Of Repeat Offenders

Part of the fun of watching enough gangster movies is realizing how often the same faces turn up on opposite sides of the law. This top 10 is no exception: Johnny Depp, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro each appear three times, while Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent make multiple appearances of their own.

Actor	Movies In This Ranking	Appearances
Johnny Depp	Black Mass, Blow, Donnie Brasco	3
Al Pacino	Donnie Brasco, Carlito’s Way, The Irishman	3
Robert De Niro	A Bronx Tale, The Irishman, Casino	3
Joe Pesci	The Irishman, Casino	2
Frank Vincent	Gotti, Casino	2

10 Legend

Tom Hardy playing both Kray twins gives Legend an immediate hook. Reggie carries himself like the polished businessman of the pair, while Ronnie is volatile enough to make almost every interaction feel dangerous. Together, they turn 1960s London into a criminal kingdom that becomes increasingly difficult to hold together.

The movie gives the Krays plenty of style without pretending that style can hide what they are. Hardy makes the brothers distinct enough that the dual performance stops feeling like a gimmick, particularly once their competing personalities begin damaging the empire they built. Legend lacks the precision of Goodfellas, but its fascination with power and criminal celebrity earns it a place here.

Tom Hardy Really Does Love A Gangster

Legend is far from Tom Hardy’s only trip into the criminal underworld. He has played gangsters, mob bosses, fixers, bootleggers, and men hovering dangerously close to all of the above for more than 20 years.

Project	Hardy’s Role
Layer Cake (2004)	Clarkie, part of a London drug operation
RocknRolla (2008)	Handsome Bob, member of the Wild Bunch
Lawless (2012)	Bootlegger Forrest Bondurant
The Drop (2014)	Bob Saginowski, working in a mob-connected bar
Legend (2015)	Reggie and Ronnie Kray
Peaky Blinders	Gang leader Alfie Solomons
Capone (2020)	Al Capone
MobLand	Crime-family fixer Harry Da Souza

read more

9 Black Mass

There is far less glamour surrounding Johnny Depp’s Whitey Bulger in Black Mass. The Boston crime boss increases his power partly through his relationship with FBI agent John Connolly, exploiting an arrangement supposedly designed to help law enforcement weaken his rivals.

The real story behind Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang is disturbing enough without much embellishment, and the movie works because Depp barely asks the audience to like him. The deeper Bulger moves into the criminal world, the uglier that world becomes.

8 Blow

Blow leaves the Mafia behind for the cocaine trade, but George Jung follows an unmistakably familiar rise-and-fall trajectory. Johnny Depp plays Jung as he discovers just how quickly crime can turn an ordinary life into something extravagant, only to learn how difficult that lifestyle becomes to control.

The movie is more sentimental than Goodfellas, particularly once Jung’s relationship with his family takes over the story. Still, that emotional emphasis works because audiences have already experienced some of the rush alongside him. The money and freedom once seemed limitless, which gives their disappearance considerably more weight.

7 Gotti

Long before John Travolta played John Gotti, Armand Assante took on the Gambino crime boss in HBO’s 1996 movie Gotti. The film follows his ascent through New York’s Mafia, including his relationship with Sammy Gravano and the violence, loyalty, and betrayal surrounding his rise to power.

Assante is the reason the movie belongs here. He gives Gotti enough magnetism to explain why the “Dapper Don” became such a public fascination without turning him into an uncomplicated folk hero. The result feels much closer to the lived-in mob world of Goodfellas than the more infamous 2018 movie sharing its title.

6 A Bronx Tale

A Bronx Tale looks at gangster life through someone young enough to decide whether he wants to become part of it. Robert De Niro’s directorial debut follows Calogero, a boy growing up in the Bronx who becomes fascinated with local mob boss Sonny despite his father’s attempts to keep him away.

Chazz Palminteri gives Sonny the charisma necessary to make that attraction believable. Calogero sees respect, money, and status, while his father recognizes everything beneath the surface that his son cannot yet understand. The movie never needs to pretend organized crime is admirable to show why belonging to that world might look irresistible from across the street.

Donnie Brasco enters the Mafia through someone who is never truly supposed to belong there. Johnny Depp plays FBI agent Joseph Pistone, who infiltrates the Bonanno crime family and grows increasingly close to Lefty Ruggiero, an aging mobster played by Al Pacino.

Lefty gives the movie its heart because he is nowhere near the top of the organization. He has spent years serving a world that offers him little beyond identity and belonging, making Donnie’s betrayal unusually painful. Even experts assessing Donnie Brasco’s Mafia activity for accuracy have highlighted how convincingly the movie recreates that world.

4 American Gangster

Denzel Washington’s Frank Lucas approaches crime like a businessman. Rather than relying on theatrical displays of power, Lucas builds a heroin empire through discipline, supply, and his conviction that he can operate more efficiently than the criminals around him.

That confidence makes his eventual exposure inevitable without making the ascent any less fascinating. Ridley Scott turns the mechanics of Lucas’ operation into much of the movie’s appeal, although American Gangster changes parts of Frank Lucas’ true story. None of that diminishes Washington’s ability to make Lucas’ self-belief almost as compelling as his downfall.

3 Carlito’s Way

Most gangster movies are about getting in. Carlito’s Way is about discovering how difficult it can be to leave. Al Pacino plays Carlito Brigante, a former drug kingpin released from prison who genuinely believes he can put crime behind him and build something better.

Unfortunately, almost everyone around Carlito makes that increasingly unlikely. Sean Penn’s David Kleinfeld is especially dangerous, dragging his client back toward a life Carlito already understands too well. Brian De Palma makes the movie tragic because Carlito can actually see an exit, and watching it keep moving farther away becomes more painful than another gangster racing willingly toward disaster.

Question 1 of 3

2 The Irishman

Custom Image by Debanjana Chowdhury

If Goodfellas captures the thrill of being admitted into the room, The Irishman wonders what happens when everyone else in that room is eventually gone. Robert De Niro plays Frank Sheeran, whose life as a mob enforcer becomes inseparable from Russell Bufalino, Jimmy Hoffa, and the decisions he makes on their behalf.

Scorsese returns to familiar territory without trying to recreate his younger gangster movies. There is far less exhilaration because The Irishman is interested in what remains after loyalty, status, and violence have run their course. That bleakness is part of why The Irishman stands among Scorsese’s greatest crime movies rather than feeling like an older director trying to repeat himself.

1 Casino

Casino is the closest thing Goodfellas has to a companion piece. Scorsese reunites Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, adds Sharon Stone in one of the strongest performances of her career, and moves the action to a Las Vegas where the money is bigger and practically everything looks more expensive.

The comparisons with Goodfellas have followed Casino since 1995. In fact, the debate over whether Casino is underrated or simply too indebted to Goodfellas practically comes with the movie. Yet that similarity is also why it tops this ranking. Sam Rothstein appears capable of controlling everything until greed, jealousy, and terrible decisions begin ripping apart what he built.

For anyone looking for the movie that most completely scratches the Goodfellas itch, Casino remains the obvious answer. It offers the access, money, violence, humor, and eventual collapse that make Scorsese’s earlier movie so addictive without simply repeating Henry Hill’s story.

• 

  Casino

  Release Date

  November 22, 1995

  Runtime

  179 minutes

  • 

    Sam "Ace" Rothstein

  • 

    Sharon Stone

    Ginger McKenna

  Casino, directed by Martin Scorsese, follows Sam "Ace" Rothstein as he navigates the challenges of managing the Tangiers Casino in 1970s Las Vegas. As Rothstein contends with complications from his enforcer Nicky Santoro, wife Ginger, and various external pressures, he faces mounting personal and professional risks.

• 

  Goodfellas

  

  10/10

  Release Date

  September 19, 1990

  Runtime

  145 minutes

  • 

    Henry Hill

  • James Conway

  GoodFellas chronicles the life of Henry Hill, a young Brooklynite with half-Irish, half-Sicilian heritage, as he rises through the ranks of a Mafia family. As he navigates the criminal underworld, he is mentored by seasoned gangster Jimmy Conway amidst the backdrop of organized crime in New York.