This is the eighth article in our examination of the AFI’s Ten Top Tens. You can read the introduction here, the first article in the series on animation here, the second article in the series on romantic comedies here, the third article on sports movies here, the fourth article on mysteries here, the fifth article on westerns here, the sixth article, on fantasy films, here, and the seventh article, on science fiction films, here.

Image Credit: Cinzia Nicolini

As I mentioned before when talking about Sports movies, a likable protagonist is highly important in film.  In Sports, they must have compelling attributes, and in Crime or Gangster films, they must have some redeeming qualities.  They don’t have to be perfect.  To be sure, there’s no quicker way to turn against someone than for their perfection.  However, there has to be a core element in the protagonist for us to root for.  Some essential good.

AFI defines a movie as falling into the Gangster genre when it centers on organized crime or maverick criminals in a twentieth century setting. So here are the ones they chose:

Rank	Film	Year
1	The Godfather	1972
2	Goodfellas	1990
3	The Godfather Part II	1974
4	White Heat	1949
5	Bonnie and Clyde	1967
6	Scarface: The Shame of the Nation	1932
7	Pulp Fiction	1994
8	The Public Enemy	1931
9	Little Caesar	1931
10	Scarface	1983

I am not a huge fan of Gangster films.  I generally don’t like the uncompromising, immoral, brutal and vicious, criminal types.  I don’t know what it is, but I just don’t like them is all.  Maybe it has something to do with the lack of morals.  Or their inability to compromise.  Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because those criminal types depicted in films are vicious and brutal.  I don’t know.

I do know however than I am sick of the AFI placing old movies on the list simply because they’re old.  Seriously, who remembers half of these movies?  Even film students haven’t heard of them or would have a difficult time defending their selection on this list.  This violates the “recall” quality I use to determine a list’s viability.  The recall quality, simply put, is what movies the majority of people or even experts think of immediately when defining a genre.  I used this exercise here and composed a list of horror films.  A lot of movies on this list simply don’t pass the recall test.  Another thing that irks me here is lack of historical context with this list.

According to AFI, the early 1930s were pivotal in providing us with groundbreaking Gangster films.  My contention is though that the 1930s couldn’t have been very good at shedding the light on organized crime.  Why?  Because the early 1930s was the middle of the organized crime era!  For crying out loud, this is like saying the the late 1960s was the best time to do a Vietnam film.  Or that the early 2000s was the best time to reflect on the September 11th attacks.  Seriously folks!  Was 1940 the best point in history to reflect and give insight on the workings of Hitler’s Germany?  Sure, would have been helpful, but, what the hell did we know!?

Point is, there is this certain period of time that must pass in order for us to have all the information and greater contextual, historical understanding of events.  Organized crime as depicted in film is an historical event.  Proper reflection of crime and corruption cannot not be completed during it.  We can’t, for instance, get a really good idea of the geography of the Rocky Mountains while standing in a valley.  Get it?

That said, I’m throwing out Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, Scarface: The Shame of a Nation, and White Heat.  Just on principle.

Others I’m throwing out for different reasons.  Let’s start with Scarface.  Here’s the problem: I hate Tony Montana.  There’s nothing about him or anyone else in this movie that makes me give a damn about it.  Sure, I think this movie is on the list not because it is a great movie, but for Al Pacino’s performance.  Not Enough!  We need more than a single actor’s performance to justify it on this top ten list.  By that logic, we should throw it out because of the equally bad acting by Michele Pfeifer.  Yes, she’s hot, but so is Jessica Alba.  It doesn’t mean that she’s good in everything that she does.

Instead, let’s put in Donnie Brasco.  It also stars Al Pacino, but there’s great acting by Johnny Depp and many supporting players too.  And unlike Scarface, Pacino’s character especially, and Depp’s as well, has loads and loads of redeeming qualities.  It also doesn’t inspire bands of impressionable people to look up to Tony Montana.  Instead, it shows a more real version of the desperate need to belong, ignorance, and bad circumstances present that truly make up a person’s cause for organized crime.  Not the glorifying ambition seen in Scarface.  Brasco is way better.

Goodfellas is the other one that I want to pitch in the garbage where it belongs.  To continue with the theme, I don’t care about any of the characters in this film.  The flashy lifestyle of guns and drugs in Scorcesee’s “masterpiece” is laughably unbelievable.  As unlikely as Pulp Fiction, but at least Pulp Fiction had character, quirky dialogue, and tried to say something.  Again, the performances were great and sort of iconic for themselves.  Pesci, De Niro, and Liotta were all excellent.  But the movie as a whole is completely forgettable.  Period.

Road to Perdition is much more moving and grounded.  The performances are equally as strong and the film has a point.  Perdition People!  The Road to Perdition!  The title says it all.  Goodfellas?  Is it supposed to be ironic?  I saw no such irony in the film.  Road to Perdition made more money and arguably had a greater impact due to the graphic novel of which the film is based.  Another thing Perdition has going for it is its fantastic score.  This can’t be understated as movies are audio-visual.  Not just visual.

Others I would like to give proper respect to in a crappy genre are Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.  Not many know of this independent film starring Forest Whitaker as a mob hitman who adheres to a Samurai-like code in how he goes about his business.  It is moving and refreshing and does nothing to glorify mobsters.  Unlike Goodfellas, it shows the criminal underground as the cardboard cut-out that it is.  No substance.

Collateral is another that I absolutely love and unlike Heat, the style that Michael Mann employs serves the story rather than detract from it.  The best part of this break-through film is that it’s one of the few times where the good guy wins.  It’s absolutely fantastic.

The one I’m most surprised not to see on the list is Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables.  I don’t particularly like the film, but I am surprised not to see it here.  I guess its because though it is about organized crime, since it is from a different perspective, like Brasco, they automatically disqualified it.  Whatever.