Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) in “American Gangster”
Until “The Martian” at least, Ridley Scott’s best film of his post-“Gladiator” period was likely “American Gangster.” It’s a little stodgy, sure, but this biopic of Frank Lucas, one of the biggest heroin traffickers in U.S. history, penned by Steve Zaillian, is consistently involving and engrossing, even if it doesn’t quite manage to reach greatness. Russell Crowe arguably has the showier role, as the cop trying to bring Lucas down, but it’s Denzel Washington who dominates the movie as Lucas. This wasn’t exactly new ground for the star, but he’s a measure of absolute control in the movie, a businessman first and foremost. Most of the mobsters on this list are driven to violence when they lose their cool, but Lucas’s violent acts (killing a rival, played by Idris Elba, in broad daylight) are as considered and meticulous as anything else he does, and that makes him even more terrifying. Even then, though, Washington doesn’t make him a monster — he’s a man desperate to be accepted by an establishment that’ll never have him, an interesting take on the archetype that pays off satisfyingly.
Vee (Lorraine Toussaint) in “Orange Is The New Black”
The second season of Netflix and Jenji Kohan’s terrific prison drama, “Orange Is The New Black,” which arrived last year, got a huge boost with the arrival of a new antagonist, Vee, played by Lorraine Toussaint, who’d come hot off a scorching turn in Ava DuVernay’s “Middle Of Nowhere.” Vee is a long-time Litchfield inmate who’s been out for a while, having returned to her drug business only to get busted again. An expert Machiavelli-level manipulator, Vee’s a force of nature, strong and seductive, and not even remotely to be trifled with, as many inmates, most notably Red, find out. And yet Toussaint, wily like a fox and fearsome like a bear, also plays her from the beginning like someone who knows she can’t stay ahead of the game for much longer, and the increasing desperation as time goes on makes her both more dangerous and more tragic. It’s a classic mobster arc, but it rarely been played better than it is here by Toussaint.
Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) in “White Heat”
What Edward G. Robinson did the mobster in the 1930s — i.e. defined it for the public at large — Jimmy Cagney did for the post-war era with Raoul Walsh’s cracking noir, “White Heat.” Like Robinson, Cagney was baby-faced even at fifty, giving his criminal, Cody Jarrett, who tries to keep control of his gang after doing time for a mail-train robbery, the feel of an overgrown, misbehaving child, helped no end by his frankly disturbing attachment to his Ma (Margaret Wycherly). More than most, Cagney’s Cody looks born to the outlaw life, positively revelling in his psychopathy, up to and including the moment of his explosive demise, as he famously screams, “Top of the world, Ma!” To say that Cody (who was based in part on real-life criminal Francis Crowley) is involved in organized crime is perhaps to overstate the case: he flies by the seat of his pants to a degree, an impulsive, spontaneous figure, and is doubly dangerous for it. It means that, even as you’re afraid of him, you still can’t help but root for him a little.
Malik El Djebana (Tahar Rahim) in “A Prophet”
It’s a familiar arc — common criminal climbs inch-by-inch to the top of the tree — but it’s rarely been done better, at least in the modern era, than in Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet.” When we meet him, Malik (Tahar Rahim, in one of the most scorching breakthrough performances of the last decade) is an illiterate street kid, raging against the world in an unfocused way. But under the harsh tutelage of Niels Arestrup’s incarcerated Corscian mobster, he finds a new purpose, and a new ambition, before the pupil ultimately supersedes the master. By the end, Malik is released, ready to cut a new swathe through the underworld, and there’s little doubt that he’ll be a huge and bloody success. Audiard’s tough, yet strangely poetic film works as a terrific crime tale, thanks in part to Rahim’s fierce central turn, at once haunted and dangerous. But it works just as well as a parable for how incarceration can often lead to criminals becoming more entrenched in a darker world, not less. This is a film about the creation of a mob boss, but we can have little doubt by the end just how effective a boss he’ll be.
Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) in “The Godfather”
Almost immediately, Don Corleone entered the annals of the most iconic cinema gangsters in history — Marlon Brando’s pose, and his puffed-out cheeks, became so recognizable that you could pick it out in silhouette. Cast despite the reservations of the studio (and after Laurence Olivier passed), Brando revived his career to an Oscar-winning degree, as the faintly mumbly, cat-loving patriarch of the Italian-American crime family. It’s a crucial performance, in that Brando gives a Shakespearean heft to what could have ended up as a pulpy crime tale: the Don is a king in all but name, holding himself with an aristocratic poise even as he orders terrible things. He’s more Lear than Macbeth, though: old and aware that his time is passing, and unsure at the legacy he’s leaving for his children, or perhaps even from his children. It’s the weariness of Brando’s turn, the way that he longs for the violence, and even his own life, to be over, that is one of the things that give the film so much soul, and that makes this turn here simply peerless; the Godfather to this whole list.
A few others we thought of but didn’t make the cut included: Ben Gazzara in “Capone“; Daniel Day-Lewis in “Gangs of New York“; Tom Wilkinson in “Batman Begins“; Gabriel Byrne in “The Usual Suspects” (though he ain’t really the boss…); El Sol in “Sin Nombre“; Tony Servillo in “Gomorrah“; and Paul Muni in the original “Scarface.” But we just know there are others you love that we’ve skipped, so send us horse heads or sleeping fishes in the comment below. –Nicholas Laskin, Oli Lyttelton, Jessica Kiang, Samantha Vacca, Gary Garrison
