Mafia cinema: 21 essential films

Weekly collection in the app for the week of August 28, 2026.

No genre has given cinema a deeper mythology of capital and family: Coppola's olive oil and operas, Scorsese's wiseguys, Leone's dynasties remembered through opium smoke, Garrone's Camorra stripped of every last piece of glamour.

This collection of 21 films runs as the weekly theme in the I Like Movies Discover tab for the week of August 28, 2026, featuring The Godfather. It deliberately leaves America too: Hong Kong (Election), Korea (New World), Japan (Battles Without Honor and Humanity) and Italy's own reckonings (Gomorrah, Il Divo).

The collection

1. The Godfather (1972) Coppola Featured An aging don's youngest son, the one meant to stay clean, is pulled into the family business by an assassination attempt; the standard against which American cinema measures itself. Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan
2. The Godfather Part II (1974) Coppola Michael consolidates the empire and loses everything human in it, while flashbacks trace his father's rise from Sicilian orphan to Don; the argument-ending sequel. Cast: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton
3. Casino (1995) Scorsese A handicapper runs a Las Vegas casino for the mob while his enforcer friend and his hustler wife burn it all down; a glittering, brutal autopsy of how the mob lost Vegas. Cast: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci
4. The Irishman (2019) Scorsese A truck driver becomes a mob hitman and Jimmy Hoffa's confidant across five decades, narrated from a nursing home; three and a half hours about what loyalty leaves you with. Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci
5. Once Upon a Time in America (1984) Leone Jewish gangsters rise from the Lower East Side through Prohibition, remembered in an opium haze by the survivor who betrayed them; Leone's four-hour farewell to cinema. Cast: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern
6. Scarface (1983) De Palma A Cuban refugee claws his way to the top of Miami's cocaine trade and machine-guns his way out of it; operatic excess that became hip-hop's favorite film. Cast: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer
7. The Untouchables (1987) De Palma Eliot Ness assembles a small incorruptible team to bring down Al Capone in Prohibition Chicago; Connery's Oscar, Morricone's score, the station-steps shootout. Cast: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro
8. Donnie Brasco (1997) Newell An FBI agent infiltrates the Bonanno family so deeply that betraying his aging mob mentor starts to feel like the real crime; from a true infiltration. Cast: Johnny Depp, Al Pacino, Michael Madsen
9. A Bronx Tale (1993) De Niro A bus driver's son grows up torn between his honest father and the neighborhood boss who half-adopts him; De Niro directing Chazz Palminteri's own childhood. Cast: Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Lillo Brancato
10. Miller's Crossing (1990) Coen A gang war over one doomed bookie forces a fixer to play both bosses against each other; the Coens' dense, double-crossing gangster noir. Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro
11. Eastern Promises (2007) Cronenberg A London midwife holding a dead girl's diary crosses the Russian mob, whose tattooed driver is not what he seems; contains the legendary bathhouse fight. Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel
12. Gomorrah (2008) Garrone Five threads inside Naples' Camorra, from toxic-waste dumping to teenage soldiers, with every scrap of gangster glamour removed; the book's author still lives under guard. Cast: Toni Servillo, Gianfelice Imparato, Maria Nazionale
13. The Long Good Friday (1980) Mackenzie A London gang lord about to go legitimate with American money watches his empire get bombed apart over one Good Friday; Bob Hoskins' star-making slow burn. Cast: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Dave King
14. The Public Enemy (1931) Wellman A street kid rises through Prohibition bootlegging, a grapefruit meets a face, and the ending is one of the genre's coldest; the 1931 template. Cast: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods
15. Atlantic City (1980) Malle An aging numbers runner who never mattered gets one real chance at crime and romance as old Atlantic City is demolished around him; Burt Lancaster's late masterpiece. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid
16. Election (2005) Johnnie To Triad bosses maneuver over the election of a new chairman, and the society's ancient baton becomes worth killing for; Hong Kong's cold, procedural answer to The Godfather. Cast: Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Louis Koo
17. New World (2013) Park Hoon-jung A police mole rises so high in a Korean crime conglomerate that both sides prepare to burn him; a succession thriller with an ending people argue about for days. Cast: Lee Jung-jae, Choi Min-sik, Hwang Jung-min
18. Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973) Fukasaku Yakuza factions in postwar Hiroshima betray each other in semi-documentary sprawl; the film that demolished Japan's honorable-gangster myth. Cast: Bunta Sugawara, Hiroki Matsukata, Kunie Tanaka
19. Il Divo (2008) Sorrentino A surreal portrait of Giulio Andreotti, seven-time Italian prime minister, and the web of Mafia trials and murders around him; Sorrentino at his most electric. Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti
20. King of New York (1990) Ferrara A drug lord fresh out of prison sets about funding a hospital with cocaine money while detectives decide the law is not enough; Christopher Walken at his most elegantly reptilian. Cast: Christopher Walken, David Caruso, Laurence Fishburne
21. The Krays (1990) Medak Twin brothers rule London's East End through the sixties with matching suits and psychotic tempers; the true story of Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Cast: Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, Billie Whitelaw

Keep your place

Half of these are three-hour commitments, and a watchlist turns the canon into a plan. Keep the collection in I Like Movies, mark films as you go, and rate them so your recommendations learn your taste. A new themed collection lands in the Discover tab every Friday.

Questions people ask

What should I watch after The Godfather films?

Once Upon a Time in America for the elegy, Casino for the machinery of the business, and Gomorrah for the corrective: what organized crime looks like with the myth removed.

Is Scarface a remake?

Yes, of Howard Hawks' 1932 gangster classic, relocated from Prohibition Chicago to cocaine-era Miami. De Palma's version was savaged on release and canonized later.

The week before: 21 essential films by female directors. See every weekly theme, or browse every guide, watch order and comparison.