Outrageously camp gangster yarn about an assassin who can only achieve sexual excitement by sniffing boiled rice! Ranked No 3 in the Top 10 of underworld hitmen, he polishes off No 2 during a string of spectacular killings, but soon has No 1 hot on his tail. Occasionally mystifying, but always witty, inventive and dazzling. find out more...

Brilliant noirish adaptation of Graham Greene's gritty novel with Attenborough superb as the psychopathic Pinky, a small time gangster and violent hood, who marries a witness to one of his crimes to keep her quiet. Disturbingly good. find out more...

A penniless pianist learns that contract-killing target Alfredo Garcia is already dead and sets out to recover his head and claim the bounty. Perhaps Peckinpah's most complex and critically controversial film, an eclectic mix of existensial quest, gothic tale, political critique of American involvement in Latin America and a love story of two losers challenging destiny. Set in Mexico. find out more...

One of the classic thrillers of the late sixties as a copper is assigned to protect a key state witness in a gangster trial. When the witness is killed the hunt is on for who knew where he was. A tense action packed thriller with one of the great car chases of all time. find out more...

Returning to themes he had touched upon in his earlier films Polanski develops the idea of Pinter's "two people in a room and then a third enters" with a couple on a remote island invaded by two on-the-run gangsters. Gradually the power positions shift... underlined with great black humour. find out more...

A seminal 1940s film noir about two brothers trapped in a world of mob corruption and realising too late their unavoidable doom. Force of Evil is a strikingly original example of the genre, dripping in atmosphere and conveying in every word and image a sense of dread. Both the director and the star were blacklisted by the McCarthyite witch-hunts, a situation that obviously influenced their work during the film. Superb. find out more...

Perhaps Caine's defining role as the ruthless London villain in Newcastle to sort out some gang bovver. When he finds out his niece has become embroiled with some very seedy characters, his involvement becomes far deeper. A violent and slick thriller with an excellent feel for both time and location and a comment on the despair of Britain in the 1970s. find out more...

Irish Sicilian Henry Hill always wanted to be a gangster and from running errands as a small boy, he graduates to becoming a trusted member of the "family". A stunning, violent and essential portrait of the Mafia's intimate details. An award winning film, superbly crafted by Scorsese. find out more...

After the subsequent murder of a scared running girl he picked up on the highway Mickey Spillane's anti-hero, dodgy private eye Mike Hammer, smells money and follows the threads on a seedy trip through the LA underworld. find out more...

We follow the everyday travails of a group of WW2 French resistance fighters in Marseille, including their engineer leader and a middle-aged woman who sets up anti-German attacks without telling her husband or daughter, as they do battle against the occupying Nazis, collaborators and traitors in their own camp. This tense and atmospheric classic, based partly on Joseph Kessel's novel and partly on Melville's own experiences as a resistance fighter who later escaped France to join the Free French find out more...