I've seen 1,000s of movies – here are 5 criminally underwatched crime films

Metro

3 days ago

Steve Charnock Published August 5, 2025 2:39pm Updated August 7, 2025 9:34am Link is copied Comments As a kid, I'd get a little bit of pocket money from my parents in exchange for doing a few chores. I was only so keen to help because washing the car and the dishes allowed me to buy videos. Never clothes, or sweets, or books. Just films on VHS. I had hundreds. Then, when I got my first proper job, DVDs were the thing. So all my wages went on those little round cinematic beauties. Now? Well, thanks to streaming I've got a lot less clutter. But even more access to movies, movies, movies... (Picture: Metro) I love Letterboxd, but as a pretty recent convert to the film reviewing and tracking platform, it's impossible to log everything I've ever sat down to watch. It's in the thousands, though. My favourite genre? Crime flicks. Of course, I've seen all the classics. Some dozens of times. You don't need me to tell you that The Godfather is a good film though, do you? Instead, let me help build up and improve your watchlist with some under-the-radar minor classics. None are super obscure, though. You should be able to find them all out there somewhere. These are five of the most criminally underwatched crime films waiting to make your next movie night… (Picture: Getty) One of the most thrilling and tense subgenres of cinematic crime comes in the panopticon-shaped visage of the prison film. We've all seen and - rightly - love The Shawshank Redemption for its drama and emotion. Many movie buffs will love the likes of Papillon, Bronson or Escape from Alcatraz for various reasons. And let's not pretend The Rock isn't great, c'mon . But for overlooked prison thrills? This Ric Roman Waugh tale of a normal fella slowly being pressed into an incredibly tough prison gangster is - like its protagonist - hard to beat (up). Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars in what's possibly his best performance to date. But it's all about the supporting cast here. Omari Hardwick, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, and Holt McCallany are all menacingly good. It's grim, it's sinister, it's violent. But it's not just a superior genre piece - it's also an effectively damning indictment of the US penal system (Picture: Bold Films/Participant Media) Martin Scorsese may not have invented the sweeping gangster epic, but he certainly perfected it and made it his own. The Goodfellas template has been used by plenty of filmmakers since its release three and a half decades ago. Not least by Scorsese himself in Casino, The Departed and The Irishman. There's also the likes of Ted Demme's Blow and Doug Liman's American Made. My third pick here is another 'American', the not-entirely-originally-entitled American Gangster. Behind the camera is the legendary Ridley Scott. In front of it? Hollywood god Denzel Washington as real-life 70s Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas. True, this isn't much of a leftfield pick. But what it is is an underappreciated one. It's simultaneously a mob movie, but also a tight police thriller - thanks to the side of the film handled by Russell Crowe's detective character. Both leads are on form, but this is a glorious crime saga improved by its stellar ensemble cast. There's Lymari Nadal, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin, RZA, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Armand Assante, John Hawkes, Richie Coster, Carla Gugino and - best of all - Ruby Dee as Lucas' disapproving mother (a performance for which she was Oscar nominated) (Picture: Universal Pictures) Some movies don't get the audience they deserve due to questionable marketing signed off by nervous studio bean counters. This Michael Shannon crime biopic was presented to the world on its release 12 years ago as a mob film. And anyone unfamiliar with the mind-shatteringly bizarre story of Richard Kuklinski will have bought that as a premise. If you'd read the excellent Anthony Bruno book that Ariel Vroman's film's based on, however, you'd know that Kuklinski wasn't just an enforcer and hitman for the Gambino crime family. He was also a serial killer. The man killed for both business and pleasure. You won't find much in the way of emotion here, but as a portrait of a stone-cold murderer with ice in his veins, this is high-grade material. Shannon is perfect here. The man's portrayal of a born killer pretending to be human is genuinely chilling (Picture: Bleiberg Entertainment/Rabbit Bandini Productions) We've seen some tightly-plotted stories here, with some intricately-written plots. This next pick is less interested in story and far more into mood. Not everyone will like this arguably slightly overlong neo-noir that's also accused by some of being a bit too talky. But if you let the snappy script, soul and R'n'B soundtrack and beautiful cinematography wash over you, you'll enjoy this much more than if you stare at it pleading for the story to progress at a pace. That's not to say that there isn't a story: Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn are two rogue-ish cops hauled over the coals for a unconventional arrest. Staring at careers that didn't work out the way they'd planned, they decide to knock off some bank robbers and disappear with the cash. S. Craig Zahler's film is an at-times rather bleak ode to 70s exploitation movies. With a sprinkling of refreshingly light-hearted buddy cop movies of the 80s on top. When it's slow, it's slow. When it's nasty, it's nasty. But it's cracking throughout (Picture: Amazon Prime Video) I make no apologies about the fact that I will talk about and advocate for this film at any given opportunity. Its director, Michael Mann, is best known for films like Heat, Ferrari, Ali and The Last of the Mohicans. And while Heat is possibly not only his finest work, but arguably the greatest crime film ever made, it can't be featured in this list. For obvious reasons. Mann's 1986 serial killer classic Manhunter absolutely can, however. If you saw Brett Ratner's 2002 Hannibal Lector movie Red Dragon starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, Ed Norton and Ralph Fiennes, you may well have wondered why Hollywood didn't instead choose to make a good version of that film. The reason may have been because they already had, 16 years before. Based on Silence of the Lambs author Thomas Harris' first Lector novel, Manhunter is a pastel-shaded nightmare. Incredibly 80s in tone, style and soundtrack, it's still somehow incredibly creepy and thoroughly unsettlingly in places. Succession's Brian Cox is unnerving in his cameo as Hannibal the Cannibal, William Peterson is perfectly on edge as intuitive FBI man Will Graham and Tom Noonan is one of cinema's great serial killers as Francis 'The Tooth Fairy' Dolarhyde. If you take away one recommendation from this list, make it Manhunter (Picture: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group) Some of those recommendations you may know, others you may not. But get them on your watchlist and, trust me, you won't regret it. Of course, these are just five underwatched and underappreciated crime flicks. There are hundreds of others. Why don't you tip a few people off as to the mob, prison, bank robbery and serial killer movies you think deserve more attention and love than they get? Nominate your picks in the comments below… (Picture: Getty Images) Next Gallery