Best 90s Crime Movies: 10 Films From the Genre’s Best Decade
The nineties were the last decade when a studio would hand a crime director serious money and then leave the room. Goodfellas opened it, Heat is its cathedral, and everything in between is a filmmaker being allowed to do the thing properly. The ten below are the ones worth your Friday. Start with Heat if you want the greatest, Goodfellas if you want the most influential, and Carlito's Way if you want the one people underrate to this day.
Heat (1995)
Michael Mann's three hour epic about a thief and the cop chasing him, built so carefully that the coffee shop scene between De Niro and Pacino needs no gunfire to be the best scene in it.
The downtown shootout still sets the standard, but the reason the film lasts is that both men are good at a job that is eating their lives.
Goodfellas (1990)
Scorsese compresses thirty years of one man's life into a rush that never lets up, and the last act is one of the great depictions of a life falling apart in real time. Everything about the modern crime film runs through this.
Carlito's Way (1993)
De Palma and Pacino, and the better film of their two collaborations. A man tries to go straight and is dragged back by loyalty, which is the oldest story in the genre told with unusual tenderness.
The Grand Central chase is one of the great sustained sequences. Roger Ebert called it a masterpiece and time has proved him right.
Miller's Crossing (1990)
The Coens' gangster picture, all coded loyalty and hats in the wind. It is more formally perfect than anything else on this list and the coldest, and the deep cut people name when they want you to know they have done the reading.
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Curtis Hanson turns an unfilmable Ellroy novel into a clean, propulsive noir about three cops who are each corrupt in a different direction. Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce arrived fully formed.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Impossible to leave off and easy to take for granted now. Watch it again for the structure rather than the dialogue and you will see why every crime film for the following decade tried and failed to copy it.
Casino (1995)
The one people skip because it looks like Goodfellas again. It is not. It is colder, sadder and more about systems, and Sharon Stone is extraordinary in it.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Everyone knows the ending, which is the wrong reason to skip it. The pleasure is watching how carefully the lie is built, and Chazz Palminteri's slow realisation still plays.
Fargo (1996)
A crime film where the moral centre is a pregnant police chief who is simply good at her job and unbothered. The Coens' warmest film, and their most quietly savage about greed.
The Firm (1993)
The paranoid legal thriller at its best, with Tom Cruise realising the firm that hired him owns him. It shares more with the seventies conspiracy films than with the courtroom pictures it was sold as.
- Start with Heat for the greatest and Goodfellas for the most influential.
- For the ones that are still underrated, watch Carlito's Way and Casino.
- For deep cuts that signal taste, watch Miller's Crossing.
- Most of these run long on purpose. Give them one uninterrupted sitting.
The whole idea
Watch one movie this week. Talk about it Friday.
We pick one film. You watch it alone, on your own time. Friday at 7:30pm PT you get ten minutes on Zoom with one other person who watched it too. No club, no homework, no small talk.
See this week's pick $5Common questions
- What is the best 90s crime movie?
- Heat (1995) is the peak of the decade and the most complete film of the group. Goodfellas (1990) is the most influential. Watch Heat first if you have to pick one.
- What is the most underrated 90s crime film?
- Carlito's Way (1993). It was overshadowed on release by Scarface comparisons, and it is the more humane and better constructed film.
- Are any of these free to stream?
- Availability moves, but The Firm, Carlito's Way and Casino regularly turn up on free ad supported services like Tubi and Pluto TV. Heat and Goodfellas usually sit behind a subscription.