The 1970s turned crime movies into the center of American filmmaking. New Hollywood directors took cops, con men, and mob families out of the studio backlot and into real streets, then let the moral lines stay messy. From The French Connection and Chinatown to The Godfather films, the decade built the crime canon that every later gangster picture still answers to.
This list gathers thirteen essential crime movies from the 1970s — heists, bank jobs, dirty-cop sagas, and two Corleone chapters that still sit at the top of the form. Every pick includes a trailer, TMDB-backed metadata, and a quick guide to why it belongs on a 1970s crime watchlist.
1. Le Cercle Rouge
- Movie Title: Le Cercle Rouge
- Release Date: October 19, 1970
- Main Cast: Alain Delon, Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonté
- Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
- TMDB Score: 7.6/10
Why We Included Le Cercle Rouge on This List
Jean-Pierre Melville’s late-career heist film is the coolest crime picture of the decade’s opening year — fedoras, silence, and a jewel job planned like a military operation. Alain Delon, Bourvil, and Gian Maria Volonté play men who barely trust one another and still fall into the same red circle of fate. The long, almost wordless robbery sequence remains a master class in process crime filmmaking. If the 1970s crime boom had a European twin, this is it.
Quick Le Cercle Rouge Summary
When French criminal Corey gets released from prison, he resolves to never return. He is quickly pulled back into the underworld after a chance encounter with escaped murderer Vogel. Along with former policeman and current alcoholic Jansen, they plot an intricate jewel heist while Police Commissioner Mattei, who lost custody of Vogel, hunts them down.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Le Cercle Rouge
Melville invented the Buddhist epigraph that gives the film its title — a proverb about men meeting in a red circle of destiny that sounds ancient and is entirely his. Bourvil, usually known for comedy, took one of his last dramatic roles here and died the same year the film was released. Melville died in 1973, making this one of the final statements from the director who had already defined the French gangster film.
2. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
- Movie Title: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
- Release Date: October 2, 1974
- Main Cast: Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam
- Director: Joseph Sargent
- TMDB Score: 7.5/10
Why We Included The Taking of Pelham One Two Three on This List
Joseph Sargent’s subway hijack thriller is 1970s New York in a pressure cooker: broke city, tired civil servants, and four armed men who want a ransom before the next train can move. Walter Matthau’s transit cop and Robert Shaw’s hijacker play a cat-and-mouse game over the radio that is funnier and meaner than most straight crime dramas. The film treats a municipal hostage crisis like a workplace comedy that can turn fatal at any stop. It is the decade’s great New York ensemble crime picture that is not a cop procedural or a mob saga.
Quick The Taking of Pelham One Two Three Summary
In New York, armed men hijack a subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers. The authorities scramble to understand how the crew plans to escape from an underground tunnel with no obvious exit. Matthau’s lieutenant has to keep the city talking while the clock on the train keeps running.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The title is transit shorthand: a train that originates at Pelham Bay Park and leaves at 1:23. The film is based on John Godey’s 1973 novel and was later remade in 2009 with Denzel Washington and John Travolta. David Shire’s bristling score and the color-coded hijackers (Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, and company) helped the original lodge in crime-movie memory long after the subway cars themselves were retired.
3. Badlands
- Movie Title: Badlands
- Release Date: January 5, 1974
- Main Cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates
- Director: Terrence Malick
- TMDB Score: 7.5/10
Why We Included Badlands on This List
Terrence Malick’s debut is a crime spree told as a daydream — beautiful light, empty highways, and a teenage narrator who cannot quite hear how terrible the story is. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek make the lovers feel small against the landscape, which is exactly why the killings land so hard. It belongs on a 1970s crime list because it shows how the decade could treat violence as American folklore instead of only as plot machinery. Few crime movies from any era are this quiet and this unsettling at the same time.
Quick Badlands Summary
An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands. What starts as a runaway romance becomes a cross-country manhunt. Malick keeps the facts of the crimes clear while the girl’s voiceover drifts somewhere else entirely.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Badlands
The story is loosely inspired by the 1958 Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate killing spree. It was Malick’s first feature, and Sheen and Spacek were not yet household names when they shot it. The film’s natural-light images and Spacek’s flat, diary-like narration became a template for later crime-road movies that wanted poetry as much as body counts.
4. Dirty Harry
- Movie Title: Dirty Harry
- Release Date: December 23, 1971
- Main Cast: Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni
- Director: Don Siegel
- TMDB Score: 7.5/10
Why We Included Dirty Harry on This List
Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood’s San Francisco cop thriller is the decade’s most influential dirty-cop myth — a .44 Magnum, a serial sniper, and a city that seems to have given up. Harry Callahan is not a warm hero; he is the crime film’s argument about what happens when the law feels slower than the killer. The movie kicked off a franchise and a political fight that still follows it around. On a 1970s crime list it is the hard-edged police picture that every later vigilante cop movie is quoting.
Quick Dirty Harry Summary
When a madman dubbed Scorpio terrorizes San Francisco, hard-nosed cop Harry Callahan — famous for his take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement — is tasked with hunting down the psychopath. The case becomes a duel between a killer who wants an audience and a detective who does not wait for permission. Siegel keeps the city looking sunlit and exhausted at the same time.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Dirty Harry
Scorpio was loosely inspired by the Zodiac Killer, who was still a live wound in the Bay Area when the film came out. Eastwood’s “Do I feel lucky?” speech became one of the most quoted lines in crime cinema. The film spawned four sequels and turned Inspector Callahan into the template for the lone-wolf cop who treats procedure as optional.
5. The Sting
- Movie Title: The Sting
- Release Date: December 25, 1973
- Main Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw
- Director: George Roy Hill
- TMDB Score: 8.0/10
Why We Included The Sting on This List
George Roy Hill’s con-man caper is the decade’s most purely pleasurable crime movie — a Depression-era long con played like a piece of popular music. Paul Newman and Robert Redford, already a beloved pair after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, here play grifters who treat revenge as choreography. Robert Shaw’s mobster is the mark you almost root for until you remember why the sting exists. It proves 1970s crime cinema did not have to be grim to be great.
Quick The Sting Summary
A novice con man teams up with an acknowledged master to avenge the murder of a mutual friend. Together they set out to pull off the ultimate big con and swindle a fortune from a big-time mobster. Hill stages each layer of the scheme so the audience is inside the crew — until the last trap snaps shut.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The Sting
The film won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, along with Oscars for Hill, David S. Ward’s original screenplay, and Marvin Hamlisch’s adaptation of Scott Joplin rags. “The Entertainer” became a pop hit off the soundtrack and permanently glued ragtime to the idea of the elegant American con. Edith Head’s costumes and the chapter-card structure make the movie feel like a pulp magazine that learned how to wink.
6. The Conversation
- Movie Title: The Conversation
- Release Date: April 12, 1974
- Main Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield
- Director: Francis Ford Coppola
- TMDB Score: 7.5/10
Why We Included The Conversation on This List
Francis Ford Coppola’s surveillance thriller is the quiet masterpiece he made between the two Godfather films — a crime story about listening rather than shooting. Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul is a wiretap artist who finally hears something he cannot put back in the reel. The movie turns professional eavesdropping into a moral trap, which is why it belongs beside the decade’s gangster and cop classics instead of only on a paranoid-thriller shelf. It is 1970s crime at its most interior: the job is the wound.
Quick The Conversation Summary
A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered. The more he rewinds the tape, the less sure he is of what the words actually mean. Coppola keeps the plot tight while Harry’s apartment, workshop, and saxophone fill up with dread.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The Conversation
The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1974, the same year The Godfather Part II arrived in theaters. Walter Murch’s sound design is the movie’s secret weapon — the famous Union Square recording changes as Harry’s guilt does. Released in the Watergate era, it landed as a crime picture about the men who do the listening for powerful clients and then cannot live with the tape.
7. Serpico
- Movie Title: Serpico
- Release Date: December 18, 1973
- Main Cast: Al Pacino, John Randolph, Jack Kehoe
- Director: Sidney Lumet
- TMDB Score: 7.5/10
Why We Included Serpico on This List
Sidney Lumet’s true-story police drama is the 1970s crime film about the cop who will not take the envelope. Al Pacino’s Frank Serpico grows a beard, a reputation, and a target on his back as he blows the whistle on NYPD graft. Lumet shoots New York as a maze of precincts where honesty looks like betrayal to everyone in the locker room. It is essential on this list because the decade’s crime boom was not only about crooks — it was about institutions that had gone crooked too.
Quick Serpico Summary
New York cop Frank Serpico blows the whistle on the rampant corruption in the force only to have his comrades turn against him. The closer he gets to testifying, the more isolated the job becomes. Lumet follows him from eager rookie to a man who cannot trust the people supposed to cover his door.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Serpico
The film is based on the real Frank Serpico and on Peter Maas’s book about his fight against NYPD corruption and his testimony before the Knapp Commission. Pacino received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Lumet shot extensively on location in New York, and the real Serpico’s story — including being shot in the face during a drug raid — hangs over every scene even when the movie stays with the daily grind of the job.
8. Dog Day Afternoon
- Movie Title: Dog Day Afternoon
- Release Date: September 21, 1975
- Main Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning
- Director: Sidney Lumet
- TMDB Score: 7.9/10
Why We Included Dog Day Afternoon on This List
Lumet and Pacino returned two years after Serpico with a bank-robbery movie that feels live, sweaty, and strangely tender. The heist goes wrong in the first act, then the film becomes a hostage drama, a media circus, and a portrait of a man who needed the money for reasons the evening news cannot handle. John Cazale’s Sal is the quiet fuse next to Pacino’s Sonny. It is the 1970s crime film that understands a botched job can tell you more about a city than a perfect one.
Quick Dog Day Afternoon Summary
Based on the true story of would-be Brooklyn bank robbers John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile, Sonny and Sal attempt a bank heist that quickly turns sour. The robbery escalates into a hostage situation and a stand-off with the police. As Sonny’s motives are slowly revealed, the sidewalk fills with cameras and the heist becomes a broadcast.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Dog Day Afternoon
The film dramatizes the August 22, 1972 robbery of a Brooklyn bank by John Wojtowicz. Pacino was nominated for Best Actor, and the “Attica! Attica!” chant — shouted to the crowd outside — became one of the decade’s indelible crime-movie moments. Lumet shot in a tight, almost real-time style that makes the bank feel like a theater the whole city is watching.
9. Taxi Driver
- Movie Title: Taxi Driver
- Release Date: February 9, 1976
- Main Cast: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- TMDB Score: 8.1/10
Why We Included Taxi Driver on This List
Martin Scorsese’s nocturnal character study is a crime movie from the inside of the cab — Travis Bickle watches the city, then decides he is the cleanup crew. Robert De Niro’s loner is the decade’s most frightening argument that alienation can become a plot. The film sits on this list because 1970s crime cinema was as interested in the man who wants to “save” the streets as in the mob that owns them. It remains the New York picture that makes the neon look like a warning light.
Quick Taxi Driver Summary
Suffering from insomnia, disturbed loner Travis Bickle takes a job as a New York City cabbie. He haunts the streets nightly, growing increasingly detached from reality as he dreams of cleaning up the filthy city. Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader follow him from late-night fares to a violence he has been rehearsing in the mirror.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Taxi Driver
The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1976. De Niro’s “You talkin’ to me?” monologue was largely improvised in front of the mirror. Bernard Herrmann composed the jazz-noir score — his final film work — and died the night he finished the music. Paul Schrader’s screenplay drew on his own period of isolation in Los Angeles, transplanted to a New York that looks like it has not slept in years.
10. The French Connection
- Movie Title: The French Connection
- Release Date: October 9, 1971
- Main Cast: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey
- Director: William Friedkin
- TMDB Score: 7.5/10
Why We Included The French Connection on This List
William Friedkin’s narcotics procedural is the 1970s cop movie that still feels like it was stolen off real Brooklyn and Harlem streets. Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle is all elbows and obsession, chasing a French heroin pipeline with a partner who can barely keep up. The film won the industry’s top prizes and then outlived them because the chase work and the moral sourness never dated. If you want the decade’s crime style in one package — handheld cameras, bad coffee, and a case that will not stay neat — start here.
Quick The French Connection Summary
Tough narcotics detective Popeye Doyle is in hot pursuit of a suave French drug dealer who may be the key to a huge heroin-smuggling operation. The job takes him from New York bars and docks to a hunt that keeps slipping through his hands. Friedkin treats the investigation as a grind that occasionally explodes into a street-level set piece.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The French Connection
The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Hackman, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. It is based on the real NYPD detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso and their work on the 1960s French Connection case. The elevated-train car chase was filmed on real New York streets with a guerrilla energy Friedkin became famous for, and it remains one of the most studied action sequences in crime cinema.
11. Chinatown
- Movie Title: Chinatown
- Release Date: June 20, 1974
- Main Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
- Director: Roman Polanski
- TMDB Score: 7.9/10
Why We Included Chinatown on This List
Roman Polanski and Robert Towne’s Los Angeles neo-noir is the 1970s crime film that looks backward to the 1930s and still feels like a knife. Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes thinks he is on a simple adultery case and walks into water rights, civic theft, and a family secret that the city would rather keep buried. Faye Dunaway and John Huston make the rich look charming until they do not. It belongs near the top of this list because it treats crime as the operating system of a booming American city, not a break in the routine.
Quick Chinatown Summary
Private eye Jake Gittes lives off the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband’s extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits. The personal and political scandals come crashing together in a case he cannot walk away from clean.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Chinatown
Robert Towne won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and the film was nominated for eleven Oscars in all. Towne’s script is still taught as a model of the detective story that keeps widening its frame. Jerry Goldsmith wrote the haunting score in a matter of days after an earlier musical approach was discarded, and Polanski’s brief on-screen appearance as the man who cuts Gittes’s nose became one of the movie’s most famous wounds.
12. The Godfather Part II
- Movie Title: The Godfather Part II
- Release Date: December 20, 1974
- Main Cast: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton
- Director: Francis Ford Coppola
- TMDB Score: 8.6/10
Why We Included The Godfather Part II on This List
Coppola’s sequel is the rare follow-up that deepens the crime epic instead of repeating it. The film cuts between a young Vito building a careful kingdom and Michael expanding the family business until there is no one left to trust. Al Pacino’s Michael is colder here, and that chill is the point of 1970s gangster cinema: success looks like exile. It has to sit this high on a 1970s crime list because it is the decade’s most ambitious argument that the American dream and the crime family are the same story told twice.
Quick The Godfather Part II Summary
In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood, and Cuba. The two timelines answer each other until Michael’s victories start to look like a different kind of loss.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The Godfather Part II
It was the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Robert De Niro won Best Supporting Actor as the young Vito, playing the same role Brando had originated, while Pacino was nominated for Best Actor as Michael. Coppola also won Best Director, confirming that the Corleone saga was not a one-off phenomenon but the decade’s defining crime project.
13. The Godfather
- Movie Title: The Godfather
- Release Date: March 14, 1972
- Main Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan
- Director: Francis Ford Coppola
- TMDB Score: 8.7/10
Why We Included The Godfather on This List
There is no honest 1970s crime list that does not end here. Coppola and Mario Puzo turned a bestselling novel into a family tragedy that also happens to be the most influential gangster film ever made. Marlon Brando’s Vito and Pacino’s Michael give the decade its central crime myth: the reluctant heir who becomes more ruthless than the father. Every mob movie after 1972 is either following this one or trying to escape it, which is why it closes the list.
Quick The Godfather Summary
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, the film chronicles the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized-crime patriarch Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael, steps in to take care of the would-be killers. What begins as a son defending his father becomes a campaign that remakes the family in Michael’s image.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The Godfather
The film won Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall were all nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the same year. Studio doubts about Coppola and Brando are now part of Hollywood lore; the finished film, with Nino Rota’s score and Gordon Willis’s shadowed photography, became the crime movie later decades still measure themselves against.
The 1970s crime canon is deeper than any single list, but these thirteen titles map the decade’s range — from Melville’s silent heist to Friedkin’s street chase, from Lumet’s New York pressure cookers to the Corleone saga that still sits at the summit. Explore our crime lists for the 1980s and 1990s to see where the form went next, and tell us which 1970s crime classic still feels like the one that changed the genre for you.
