Crime and Heist Movies
Crime is the most dependable genre there is: someone wants money, someone wants them caught, and the plan never survives contact with reality. These are the best heist, gangster and crime films for a night when you want a story that moves, most of them from the last ten years, alongside the classics everything since has been borrowing from.
They split usefully into three kinds. Heists are about competence, and the pleasure is watching a plan work: Ocean's Eleven, Logan Lucky, Baby Driver. Crime dramas are about cost, and they leave a mark: The Godfather, The Irishman, Hell or High Water. And a newer strand is about ordinary people in over their heads, which is where the tension gets almost unbearable: Uncut Gems, Emily the Criminal, Rebel Ridge. If you want fun, pick a heist. If you want to feel something, pick a drama.
Most of these are R-rated for language and violence. The easiest to share are Knives Out, Ocean's Eleven and Logan Lucky, all PG-13. Check the length before you start: The Irishman runs three and a half hours, and Heat and The Godfather are close to three. For more tension see Best Thrillers to Watch Tonight, and for real cases, True Crime Series and Docs.
Heat (1995)
Movie · 1995The film every heist movie since has borrowed from. Michael Mann gives the cop and the thief equal weight, so you're never sure who to root for, and the downtown shootout still sounds like nothing else on film. Nearly three hours, and the coffee-shop scene alone justifies them.
Hell or High Water
Movie · 2016Two brothers rob small branches of the bank that's foreclosing on their late mother's ranch, while Jeff Bridges's nearly retired Texas Ranger closes in. A Western in everything but date, quietly angry about debt and money, and the tightest script on this list.
Ocean's Eleven
Movie · 2001The model of a fun heist: a charming crew, an impossible vault and almost nobody getting hurt. Steven Soderbergh shoots Las Vegas like a cocktail party and lets the cast enjoy themselves. PG-13 and easy to share, which makes it the right call when a group can't agree.
Baby Driver
Movie · 2017Edgar Wright cut every chase and shootout to the songs playing in his getaway driver's earbuds, so the film moves like a feature-length music video with real stakes. The car chases are as good as any of the decade. It gets darker and more violent in the last act.
Widows (2018)
Movie · 2018Steve McQueen's heist film starts where most end: the crew is dead, and the man they robbed comes to collect from the leader's widow. Viola Davis leads a terrific cast, Gillian Flynn co-wrote it, and Chicago's politics turn out to be as crooked as the job. Smarter and angrier than the genre usually allows.
Knives Out
Movie · 2019The crime film you can watch with your parents. Rian Johnson builds a proper fair-play murder mystery around a wealthy, awful family, then keeps playing games with what you think you know. Some swearing and one grim scene early on, but the most purely enjoyable pick here.
Uncut Gems
Movie · 2019Not fun, by design. Adam Sandler's New York jeweler makes one bad bet after another while everyone shouts over each other, and the Safdie brothers never let the pressure drop. Constant swearing. If you've ever wanted a film to make you physically tense, this is the one.
Hit Man
Movie · 2023Glen Powell plays a mild college professor who poses as a contract killer for police stings and turns out to be very good at it. Richard Linklater makes it a screwball comedy, a romance and only a little bit a crime film. Sexy rather than violent, with several frank sex scenes.
Logan Lucky
Movie · 2017Steven Soderbergh redoes his own Ocean's Eleven with a crew of West Virginia amateurs and a NASCAR race as the target. Channing Tatum and Adam Driver are lovely as brothers, and Daniel Craig steals scenes as a bleach-blond safecracker. PG-13, warm and very funny.
The Nice Guys
Movie · 2016A crime comedy that works fully as both. Ryan Gosling's hopeless private eye and Russell Crowe's hired muscle chase a missing girl through the smog of 1977 Los Angeles, and Gosling's physical comedy is the best of his career. Swearing, violence and a porn-industry plot throughout.
Emily the Criminal
Movie · 2022The most relatable crime film here. Aubrey Plaza is drowning in student debt and locked out of decent jobs by an old conviction, so she takes cash to buy goods with stolen credit cards. Lean, tense and grounded, and quietly furious about work in America.
Rebel Ridge
Movie · 2024Aaron Pierre plays an ex-Marine whose bail money for his cousin is seized by small-town police, and he spends a long time trying to fix it through the proper channels. The tension comes from his restraint. A slow-building, deeply satisfying thriller about civil forfeiture.
Sicario
Movie · 2015The bleakest film on this list. Emily Blunt's FBI agent is drafted into a cartel operation where nobody will tell her the rules or the real objective. Roger Deakins's photography is stunning, and the violence is matter-of-fact rather than thrilling.
The Killer (2023)
Movie · 2023David Fincher's assassin narrates his own professionalism in voiceover, then botches the first job we see him do, and the rest of the film is cleanup. Michael Fassbender barely speaks aloud. Dry, precise and funnier than it looks, with The Smiths on his headphones the whole way.
The Order (2024)
Movie · 2024Jude Law's worn-out FBI agent hunts a white supremacist gang robbing banks and armored cars across the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s. Based on a real case and played as a tense, old-fashioned procedural. Nicholas Hoult is unnerving as the gang's polite, persuasive leader.
Roofman
Movie · 2025The newest pick and the warmest. Channing Tatum plays a real robber who broke into McDonald's restaurants through the roof, escaped prison and lived secretly inside a Toys "R" Us. More romance and character comedy than heist, with Kirsten Dunst as the single mother he falls for.
Goodfellas
Movie · 1990The opposite of The Godfather's grandeur: fast, funny and frightening, narrated by a gangster who loved the life right up until it turned on him. The tracking shot through the Copacabana's kitchen is famous for good reason. Heavy swearing and sudden, brutal violence throughout.
The Godfather
Movie · 1972The foundation for everything else here, and less about crime than about a family business and the son who swore he'd never join it. Nearly three hours and slow by modern standards, so give it your full attention. Still the best-acted American film most people will ever see.
The Irishman
Movie · 2019Scorsese's last word on the mob, and an old man's film in the best sense: its final hour is about what's left once the killing stops. Three and a half hours, with digitally de-aged stars that take a few minutes to get used to. Plenty of people watch it over two nights.
No Country for Old Men
Movie · 2007The Coen brothers' crime film is mostly a chase, and Javier Bardem's killer, with his coin toss and his air-powered cattle gun, is among the most frightening villains in modern film. There's almost no music. The ending frustrates some viewers; it's meant to.
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Picks are editorial recommendations. Streaming availability changes by region and over time — the “where to stream” links check current availability on JustWatch.