“Controversially, the cinema has always made criminals look cool,” said film critic Peter Bradshaw.

The big screen loves bad guys and, to modify Blake’s description of Milton, has often been of the devil’s party, while knowing it perfectly well. Yet crime and transgression are the stuff of drama and real life, too. Howard Hawks’s Scarface in 1932 gave us Paul Muni’s criminal sociopath Tony Camonte, brilliantly reinvented by Brian De Palma in 1983 with Al Pacino in the lead role.

The gangster genre showed how criminal networks operated inside their own fiercely moral codes and stood in direct opposition to courtroom dramas such as Twelve Angry Men, with its formal endorsement of the letter of the law. The noir genre of the 1940s and 1950s conversely found criminality to reside not in dynastic cultures or parodic societal norms but in individual acts of cynicism, obsession and desperation.

These are the 25 best crime films ever made according to the critics of the Guardian and Observer.

[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B00C2IJJLO&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Chinatown Roman Polanski]

1. [amazon text=Chinatown&template=custom_title&asin=B00C2IJJLO&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Chinatown Roman Polanski] (1974)

Director: [amazon text=Roman Polanski&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Roman Polanski] Stars: [amazon text=Jack Nicholson&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Jack Nicholson], [amazon text=Faye Dunaway&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Faye Dunaway], [amazon text=John Huston&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=John Huston]

[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B00C2IJJLO&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Chinatown Roman Polanski]

[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B00I3C1T1Q&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Touch of Evil Orson Welles]

2. [amazon text=Touch of Evil&template=custom_title&asin=B00I3C1T1Q&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Touch of Evil Orson Welles] (1958)

Director: [amazon text=Orson Welles&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Orson Welles] Stars: [amazon text=Charlton Heston&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Charlton Heston], [amazon text=Orson Welles&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Orson Welles], [amazon text=Janet Leigh&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Janet Leigh]

[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B00I3C1T1Q&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Touch of Evil Orson Welles]

3.

Vertigo

(1958)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes

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4.

Badlands

(1973)

Director: Terrence Malik
Stars: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates

Amazon
$24.89

5.

Rashomon

(1950)

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori

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[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B00U8O6IE0&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Double Indemnity Billy Wilder]

6. [amazon text=Double Indemnity&template=custom_title&asin=B00U8O6IE0&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Double Indemnity Billy Wilder] (1944)

Director: [amazon text=Billy Wilder&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Billy Wilder] Stars: [amazon text=Fred MacMurray&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Fred MacMurray], [amazon text=Barbara Stanwyck&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Barbara Stanwyck], [amazon text=Edward G. Robinson&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Edward G. Robinson]

[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B00U8O6IE0&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Double Indemnity Billy Wilder]

7.

Get Carter

(1971)

Director: Mike Hodges
Stars: Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland

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$14.99

8.

Pulp Fiction

(1994)

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson

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9.

Hidden (Caché)

(2005)

Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou

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10.

Goodfellas

(1990)

Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci

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$10.25

11.

The Conversation

(1974)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield

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12.

Bonnie and Clyde

(1967)

Director: Arthur Penn
Stars: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard

Amazon
$12.99

13.

The Killing

(1956)

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Stars: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards

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14.

French Connection

(1971)

Director: William Friedkin
Stars: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey

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[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B01ACP59XA&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Big Sleep Howard Hawks]

15. [amazon text=The Big Sleep&template=custom_title&asin=B01ACP59XA&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Big Sleep Howard Hawks] (1946)

Director: [amazon text=Howard Hawks&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Howard Hawks] Stars: [amazon text=Humphrey Bogart&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Humphrey Bogart], [amazon text=Lauren Bacall&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Lauren Bacall], [amazon text=John Ridgely&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=John Ridgely]

[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B01ACP59XA&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Big Sleep Howard Hawks]

16.

La Cérémonie

(1995)

Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset

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17.

Point Blank

(1967)

Director: John Boorman
Stars: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn

Amazon
$9.58

18.

Hard Boiled

(1992)

Director: John Woo
Stars: Yun-Fat Chow, Tony Chiu Wai Leung, Teresa Mo

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19.

The Long Good Friday

(1980)

Director: John Mackenzie
Stars: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Dave King

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20.

A Prophet

(2009)

Director: Jacques Audiard
Stars: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif

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20.

Heat

(1995)

Director: Michael Mann
Stars: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer

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20.

Scarface

(1983)

Director: Brian De Palma
Stars: Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer

Amazon
$9.95

23.

Miller’s Crossing

(1990)

Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Stars: Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, John Turturro

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24.

The Postman Always Rings Twice

(1946)

Director: Tay Garnett
Stars: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway

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25.

Le Jour se Lève

(1939)

Director: Marcel Carné
Stars: Jean Gabin, Jacqueline Laurent, Arletty

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