The 2000s were the decade crime movies stopped belonging to one city or one accent. Hong Kong moles got remade in South Boston, a Rio favela photographed its own drug war, and a Texas coin toss made chance feel like a weapon. From Snatch and Infernal Affairs to City of God, The Departed, and No Country for Old Men, the decade treated a crime story as something you could shoot as a con, a revenge saga, a cop procedural, or a comic-book war on organized crime.
This list gathers thirteen essential crime movies from the 2000s — stolen diamonds, counterfeit stamps, undercover cops, and a Joker who turns Gotham’s gangsters into extras. Every pick uses TMDB-backed metadata and a short guide to why it belongs on a 2000s crime watchlist.
1. Snatch
- Movie Title: Snatch
- Release Date: September 1, 2000
- Main Cast: Jason Statham, Alan Ford, Stephen Graham
- Director: Guy Ritchie
- TMDB Score: 7.8/10
Why We Included Snatch on This List
Guy Ritchie’s London pile-up is the 2000s crime movie that opens the decade by treating a heist as a traffic accident you cannot look away from. Jason Statham’s bare-knuckle promoter, Alan Ford’s Brick Top, and Stephen Graham’s volatile boxing-world climber chase one diamond through bookies, gangsters, and amateurs who should have stayed home. It belongs here because so many 2000s crime lists start with prestige and this one starts with speed: overlapping cons, unlucky dogs, and a stolen stone that will not stay stolen. On a 2000s watchlist it is the British entry that proved a crime comedy could still feel dangerous. If the decade had a handshake, this is the sweaty one before the Oscars arrive.
Quick Snatch Summary
Unscrupulous boxing promoters, violent bookies, a Russian gangster, incompetent amateur robbers, and supposedly Jewish jewellers all fight to track down a priceless stolen diamond. Nobody has a clean claim on it, and nobody can hold it for long. The diamond is the MacGuffin. The collisions are the movie.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Snatch
Ritchie followed Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels with a bigger, louder London underworld — same chopped chronology, more international traffic. Brad Pitt’s unintelligible Irish Traveller boxer became one of the decade’s most quoted crime-movie turns, even though the plot keeps shoving him into other people’s jobs. Statham’s Turkish is the calm center of a movie that otherwise refuses to sit still. Together with Lock, Stock, Snatch locked in the early-2000s British gangster-comedy sound that later crime pictures either copied or ran away from.
2. Nine Queens
- Movie Title: Nine Queens
- Release Date: August 31, 2000
- Main Cast: Ricardo Darín, Gastón Pauls, Leticia Brédice
- Director: Fabián Bielinsky
- TMDB Score: 7.8/10
Why We Included Nine Queens on This List
Fabián Bielinsky’s Buenos Aires stamp swindle is the 2000s crime movie that treats a con as a day’s work, not a costume. Ricardo Darín’s veteran hustler, Gastón Pauls’s younger partner, and Leticia Brédice’s hotel-world wild card spend one long shift trying to unload a sheet of counterfeit rare stamps called the nine queens. It belongs here because English-language 2000s crime lists often stop at Boston and Texas, and this one is the decade’s proof that a perfect con movie can be spoken in Argentine Spanish on a sidewalk. On this list it is the opening-night hustle: two men who cannot trust each other selling a lie to a collector who might be lying too. If you like crime stories where the last shot rewrites the whole day, start here.
Quick Nine Queens Summary
Two con artists try to swindle a stamp collector by selling him a sheet of counterfeit rare stamps — the “nine queens.” The job looks simple until every helper, witness, and relative turns out to have a side angle. The stamps are the bait. The partnership is the real risk.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Nine Queens
Bielinsky’s feature debut became a landmark of Argentine cinema and a calling card for Darín, who would spend the 2000s as the face of smart South American crime drama. Hollywood remade the setup as Criminal (2004), which is a useful reminder of how clean the original’s engine is: one day, one mark, one fake sheet. Bielinsky directed only one more feature before his death in 2006, which is why Nine Queens still feels like a complete argument rather than a franchise pilot. On TMDB it remains one of the decade’s highest-rated pure con movies — a crime picture about paperwork and nerve.
3. Catch Me If You Can
- Movie Title: Catch Me If You Can
- Release Date: December 16, 2002
- Main Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken
- Director: Steven Spielberg
- TMDB Score: 8.0/10
Why We Included Catch Me If You Can on This List
Steven Spielberg’s Frank Abagnale story is the 2000s crime movie that makes check fraud look like a coming-of-age musical without the songs. Leonardo DiCaprio’s teenage impostor, Tom Hanks’s FBI pursuer, and Christopher Walken’s crumbling father turn a true-crime résumé — Pan Am pilot, doctor, prosecutor — into a chase about a kid who would rather be anyone else. It belongs here because so many 2000s crime films sell brutality as authenticity, and this one sells charm as the weapon. On a 2000s list it is the con movie that still plays like a Christmas classic: bright suits, hotel rooms, and a cop who cannot quite hate the guy he is hunting. If the decade’s crime boom had a crowd-pleaser, this is the one parents and cinephiles both finish.
Quick Catch Me If You Can Summary
Before his 19th birthday, Frank Abagnale Jr. successfully cons millions of dollars worth of checks while posing as a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and a legal prosecutor. An FBI agent makes it his mission to put him behind bars. Frank not only eludes capture — he revels in the pursuit. The forgeries are the plot. The cat-and-mouse is the relationship.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Catch Me If You Can
The film adapts Frank Abagnale Jr.’s memoir of the same name, a 2000s true-crime brand that already sounded like a movie before Spielberg touched it. Walken earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor as Frank’s father, the sad engine under the glamorous cons. DiCaprio and Hanks — two of the decade’s most bankable faces — play the chase as a reluctant mentorship rather than a simple cop-and-crook pairing. John Williams’s jazzy score and the period production design made early-1960s fraud feel like a 2002 holiday event, which is why the movie still circulates as both a crime picture and a comfort watch.
4. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
- Movie Title: Kill Bill: Vol. 1
- Release Date: October 10, 2003
- Main Cast: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox
- Director: Quentin Tarantino
- TMDB Score: 8.0/10
Why We Included Kill Bill: Vol. 1 on This List
Quentin Tarantino’s first half of the Bride’s revenge is the 2000s crime movie that treats an assassination circle like a genre mixtape you can bleed on. Uma Thurman’s waking assassin, Lucy Liu’s O-Ren Ishii, and Vivica A. Fox’s suburban ex-colleague turn a wedding-chapel massacre into a numbered death list. It belongs here because 2000s crime cinema was not only cops and moles — it was also a woman in a yellow tracksuit walking into a Tokyo restaurant to settle a professional debt. On this list it is the revenge entry that made martial-arts choreography feel like a crime-film set piece again. Volume 1 is the stylish half; the decade needed both the spectacle and the bill that comes due later.
Quick Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Summary
An assassin is shot by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle — but she lives to plot her vengeance. She works her way through the people who left her for dead, one name at a time. The list is the structure. The House of Blue Leaves is the explosion.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Tarantino shot the Bride’s story as one long film; Miramax released it as two volumes, which is why Volume 1 ends on a cliff rather than a verdict. The O-Ren origin passage is an anime insert produced with Production I.G, a 2000s flex that lets a crime biography jump mediums without leaving the same revenge plot. Thurman’s Bride — Beatrix Kiddo — became one of the decade’s defining genre images: bare feet, a Hattori Hanzō blade, and a to-do list written in blood. The Tokyo finale is still the movie’s calling card, a single-location crime massacre staged like a musical number.
5. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
- Movie Title: Kill Bill: Vol. 2
- Release Date: April 16, 2004
- Main Cast: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah
- Director: Quentin Tarantino
- TMDB Score: 7.9/10
Why We Included Kill Bill: Vol. 2 on This List
The second half of Tarantino’s rampage is the 2000s crime movie that puts the sword down long enough for the conversation that Volume 1 postponed. Uma Thurman’s Bride, David Carradine’s Bill, and Daryl Hannah’s surviving assassin turn the rest of the Death List Five into a Western about what a professional killer owes the person who trained her. It belongs here because a crime list that keeps only the Tokyo nightclub and skips the porch talk is missing the point of the job: revenge is a career with a final client. On this list it is the quieter, meaner twin — buried coffins, Pai Mei’s training, and a last chapter that is more confrontation than choreography. Together the two volumes are the decade’s most committed assassination saga.
Quick Kill Bill: Vol. 2 Summary
The Bride unwaveringly continues her roaring rampage of revenge against the band of assassins who had tried to kill her and her unborn child. She visits each of her former associates one by one, checking off the victims on her Death List Five until there is nothing left to do but kill Bill. The remaining names are the plot. The conversation with Bill is the destination.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Carradine’s Bill is a late-career role that turned a 1970s television kung-fu icon into the decade’s calmest crime boss — a man who lectures more than he lunges. Volume 2 leans on spaghetti-Western framing and a Pai Mei training stretch that explains how the Bride became a problem her old employers could not bury. Released six months after Volume 1, it asked 2004 audiences to treat a revenge story like a serialized crime novel rather than a single Saturday night. The two films still play best as one job with an intermission: first the massacre, then the accounting.
6. Elite Squad
- Movie Title: Elite Squad
- Release Date: October 5, 2007
- Main Cast: Wagner Moura, André Ramiro, Caio Junqueira
- Director: José Padilha
- TMDB Score: 8.1/10
Why We Included Elite Squad on This List
José Padilha’s BOPE film is the 2000s crime movie that looks at Rio’s drug war from inside the special-police van, not the tourist overlook. Wagner Moura’s Captain Nascimento, André Ramiro’s ambitious recruit, and Caio Junqueira’s conflicted officer spend 1997 trying to “clean” a slum before a papal visit — a deadline that turns policing into a raid schedule. It belongs here because City of God already taught the decade to watch Rio’s gangs; this one answers from the other side of the rifle. On a 2000s list it is the cop procedural that refuses to flatter anyone: corrupt precincts, terrified rookies, and a narrator who sounds exhausted by his own legend. If you want the decade’s most argument-starting crime film, this is the one people still fight about.
Quick Elite Squad Summary
In 1997, before the pope’s visit to Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento of BOPE — the Special Police Operations Battalion — is assigned to eliminate the risks posed by drug dealers in a dangerous slum near where the pope intends to stay. The job is supposed to be preparation. It becomes a portrait of a unit that treats the city like a battlefield.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Elite Squad
Padilha, already known for the documentary Bus 174, brought a research-heavy, handheld intensity to a fictional BOPE story that became one of Brazil’s biggest box-office hits. Moura’s Nascimento — barked orders, voice-over, a man aging in real time — became a national figure and later traveled with the actor into other hard-edged roles. The film was Brazil’s official submission for the Academy Awards and sparked a fierce local debate about whether it condemned or glamorized police violence. A 2010 sequel, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, pushed the same universe into politics; the original remains the 2000s crime shock that started the argument.
7. The Chaser
- Movie Title: The Chaser
- Release Date: February 14, 2008
- Main Cast: Kim Yoon-seok, Ha Jung-woo, Seo Young-hee
- Director: Na Hong-jin
- TMDB Score: 7.8/10
Why We Included The Chaser on This List
Na Hong-jin’s debut is the 2000s crime movie that turns a missing-persons ledger into a night you cannot leave. Kim Yoon-seok’s dirty ex-detective pimp, Ha Jung-woo’s soft-spoken client, and Seo Young-hee’s worker still in the field collide when several of Joong-ho’s girls vanish without paying their debts. It belongs here because 2000s Korean crime cinema was not only serial-killer puzzles — this one is a chase where the cop is compromised and the clock is already behind. On this list it is the late-decade gut punch: a crime thriller that keeps making the wrong man run faster. If Memories of Murder is the decade’s unsolved ache, The Chaser is the one that almost makes you wish it had stayed unsolved.
Quick The Chaser Summary
Joong-ho is a dirty detective turned pimp who is in financial trouble after several of his girls disappear without clearing their debts. While trying to track them down, he finds a clue that the vanished women were all called by the same client — a man one of his girls is meeting right now. The debt collection becomes a hunt. The hunt becomes something much worse.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The Chaser
Na loosely drew on the case of serial killer Yoo Young-chul, then turned the true-crime outline into a fictional race across Seoul. The film announced Na as a major Korean director; he later made The Wailing, but this first feature is still the leaner, nastier crime machine. Kim Yoon-seok’s Joong-ho is the opposite of a noble detective: a man whose job is exploitation until the disappearances become personal accounting. Ha Jung-woo’s quiet register makes the client scenes more unsettling than a traditional slasher introduction, which is why the movie travels so well as a 2000s crime recommendation rather than a simple horror label.
8. Infernal Affairs
- Movie Title: Infernal Affairs
- Release Date: December 12, 2002
- Main Cast: Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang
- Director: Alan Mak Siu-Fai
- TMDB Score: 7.8/10
Why We Included Infernal Affairs on This List
Alan Mak’s Hong Kong mole thriller — made with Andrew Lau — is the 2000s crime movie that later taught Hollywood how to do dual undercovers without wasting a scene. Andy Lau’s rising inspector, Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s buried triad plant, and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang’s police handler spend years trying to expose the leak on their own side. It belongs here because The Departed is the Oscar-winning remix, and this is the tighter original: rooftops, cell phones, and two men who have been pretending so long they barely have a civilian self left. On a 2000s list it is the Asian crime engine the rest of the decade borrowed from. Watch it before or after Scorsese; either way you will hear the echo.
Quick Infernal Affairs Summary
Chan Wing Yan, a young police officer, has been sent undercover as a mole in the local mafia. Lau Kin Ming, a young mafia member, infiltrates the police force. Years later, Chen Wing Yan and Inspector Lau Kin Ming race against time to expose the mole within their midst. Each side has a man in the wrong building. The first one identified loses.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Infernal Affairs
Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s film swept the Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Picture, and became the rare local crime hit that immediately read as an international remake target. Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) transplanted the same double-mole premise to South Boston and won Best Picture — a 2000s crime pipeline from Kowloon to the Oscars. Leung and Lau, two of Hong Kong cinema’s biggest stars, play mirror images rather than a simple hero and villain, which is why the rooftop meetings feel like a single person split in half. Two sequels followed in 2003; the first film remains the one crime lists keep.
9. Memories of Murder
- Movie Title: Memories of Murder
- Release Date: April 25, 2003
- Main Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung, Kim Roi-ha
- Director: Bong Joon Ho
- TMDB Score: 8.1/10
Why We Included Memories of Murder on This List
Bong Joon Ho’s Hwaseong-inspired procedural is the 2000s crime movie that turns a serial-killer hunt into a weather report: rain, fields, and detectives who get worse at the job the longer they stay. Song Kang-ho’s rural cop, Kim Sang-kyung’s Seoul-trained partner, and Kim Roi-ha’s heavier-handed colleague chase a sadistic rapist-murderer of young women through 1980s South Korea with conflicting methods and no clean ending. It belongs here because so many 2000s crime films promise a catch, and this one is honest about what a real unsolved case does to the people assigned to it. On this list it is the detective movie that refuses the comfort of genius. If you only know Bong from later international hits, this is the crime picture that already had his eye for bureaucratic failure.
Quick Memories of Murder Summary
A sadistic serial rapist and murderer of young women terrorizes a small province in 1980s South Korea. To prevent further crimes, three increasingly desperate detectives with conflicting methods race against time to unravel the violent mind of the killer in a futile effort to solve the case. The clues keep arriving. The certainty never does.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About Memories of Murder
Bong based the film on the Hwaseong serial murders, a real string of killings that haunted South Korea for years and had not been closed when the movie opened in 2003. Song Kang-ho’s detective — part clown, part thug, part exhausted civil servant — became one of the decade’s great cop performances. In 2019, after DNA work identified Lee Choon-jae, the film’s final look-to-camera landed even harder for audiences who now knew the case’s afterlife. The movie established Bong as a director who could do crime, comedy, and political weather in the same scene, a combination he would later take global.
10. The Departed
- Movie Title: The Departed
- Release Date: October 4, 2006
- Main Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- TMDB Score: 8.2/10
Why We Included The Departed on This List
Martin Scorsese’s Boston remake is the 2000s crime movie that finally handed the director the Oscars the earlier mob pictures had been denied. Leonardo DiCaprio’s undercover cop, Matt Damon’s golden-boy mole, and Jack Nicholson’s Irish mob boss play the Infernal Affairs premise as a shouting match in drop ceilings and bars. It belongs here because it is the decade’s most decorated crime film and still a vicious entertainment: rats, envelopes, and a city that treats loyalty as a temporary visa. On a 2000s list it is the Hollywood answer to the Hong Kong original — louder, bloodier, and built for an ensemble that looks like a greatest-hits reel. If you want the mid-decade crime event that everyone saw, this is it.
Quick The Departed Summary
To take down South Boston’s Irish Mafia, the police send in one of their own to infiltrate the underworld, not realizing the syndicate has done likewise. While an undercover cop curries favor with the mob kingpin, a career criminal rises through the police ranks. Both sides soon discover there is a mole among them. The question is not whether someone is lying. It is who gets identified first.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The Departed
The film is an American remake of Infernal Affairs, relocated to South Boston and stuffed with a who’s-who 2000s cast. It won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director — Scorsese’s first in that category — and Best Adapted Screenplay for William Monahan. Nicholson’s Frank Costello, loosely flavored by Whitey Bulger lore, is the movie’s chaotic sun: a crime boss who enjoys being watched. The rat that appears in the final shot became an instant pop-culture punchline and a reminder that Scorsese, even with a statue in hand, was still willing to underline the joke.
11. City of God
- Movie Title: City of God
- Release Date: August 30, 2002
- Main Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen
- Director: Fernando Meirelles
- TMDB Score: 8.4/10
Why We Included City of God on This List
Fernando Meirelles’s Cidade de Deus chronicle is the 2000s crime movie that made a Rio housing project feel like the center of the world’s crime map. Alexandre Rodrigues’s Rocket, Leandro Firmino’s Li’l Zé, and Phellipe Haagensen’s Benny grow up inside a 1970s favela where photography and the drug trade become two ways of looking at the same street. It belongs here because no other 2000s crime film matches its velocity and its census: kids, gangs, soccer, cameras, and a neighborhood that keeps producing the next boss. On this list it is the international masterpiece the decade could not ignore — a crime epic that plays like a documentary with a pulse. If you only watch one non-English crime movie from the 2000s, this is still the one people name first.
Quick City of God Summary
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime. One of them wants a picture. The other wants the block.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About City of God
Meirelles directed from Paulo Lins’s novel, with Kátia Lund as co-director, and cast many non-professional actors from the communities the story draws on. The film earned four Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay — a rare 2000s path for a Portuguese-language crime epic into the Oscar conversation. Rodrigues, Firmino, and the younger ensemble give the movie its documentary charge: faces that do not look imported from a studio gangster unit. Its kinetic editing and still-photo freeze-frames became a 2000s crime-film grammar that later heist and drug-war movies kept stealing.
12. The Dark Knight
- Movie Title: The Dark Knight
- Release Date: July 16, 2008
- Main Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart
- Director: Christopher Nolan
- TMDB Score: 8.5/10
Why We Included The Dark Knight on This List
Christopher Nolan’s Gotham crime war is the 2000s movie that smuggled a gangland picture inside a superhero brand and then outgrew the costume. Christian Bale’s Batman, Heath Ledger’s Joker, and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent set out to dismantle the city’s remaining criminal organizations — and instead become prey to a mastermind who treats chaos as policy. It belongs here because the plot is not a superhero origin; it is a crime story about cops, a district attorney, and mobs who suddenly have a new competitor. On a 2000s list it is the biggest crime film of the decade, the one that made a comic-book city feel like Michael Mann weather. If you skip it because of the cape, you miss the Joker’s real job: breaking the organized-crime truce.
Quick The Dark Knight Summary
Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, he sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership works until a rising criminal mastermind known as the Joker unleashes a reign of chaos on the terrified citizens of Gotham. The mobs are the old problem. The Joker is the new one.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About The Dark Knight
Ledger’s Joker won a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor — a 2000s crime performance so dominant it permanently changed how studios talked about “comic-book movies.” Nolan shot major sequences in IMAX, including the Hong Kong extraction and the Chicago/Gotham street work, which gave a crime-thriller geography a scale usually reserved for epics. The film became a billion-dollar global hit and the rare blockbuster that crime-movie fans and multiplex crowds claimed at the same time. Its failure to land a Best Picture nomination in a five-nominee field helped push the Academy to widen that category — a behind-the-scenes aftershock as famous as any scene in the movie.
13. No Country for Old Men
- Movie Title: No Country for Old Men
- Release Date: November 9, 2007
- Main Cast: Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin
- Director: Joel Coen
- TMDB Score: 8.0/10
Why We Included No Country for Old Men on This List
Joel Coen’s Texas border chase — made with Ethan Coen — is the 2000s crime movie that treats a drug-deal leftover like a curse you cannot put back in the ground. Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh, Tommy Lee Jones’s Sheriff Bell, and Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss turn $2 million and a hotel-room fortune into a hunt where prey and predator keep swapping maps. It belongs here because it is the decade’s coldest masterpiece: almost no score, a cattle-gun knocking on motel doors, and a sheriff who understands he is late to a new kind of violence. On this list it is the closing argument — the 2000s crime film that won the big prizes without softening the coin toss. If the decade began with a stolen diamond in London, it ends with a satchel in the desert and a man who does not negotiate.
Quick No Country for Old Men Summary
Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon dead bodies, $2 million, and a hoard of heroin in a Texas desert, but methodical killer Anton Chigurh comes looking for it, with local sheriff Ed Tom Bell hot on their trail. The roles of prey and predator blur as the violent pursuit of money and justice collide. The money is sitting there. Taking it is the crime that starts every other crime.
Interesting Facts or Trivia About No Country for Old Men
The Coens adapted Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel with unusual fidelity, keeping the novel’s sudden exits and its refusal to score violence like an action beat. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Bardem’s Chigurh — bowl cut, captive bolt pistol, and a coin that does the talking. Jones’s tired sheriff is the movie’s moral weather: a 2000s crime witness who cannot make the new century add up. It remains the rare Best Picture winner that still feels like a pitiless genre film rather than a ceremony piece, which is why it closes a 2000s crime list instead of sitting politely in the middle.
The 2000s crime map runs from a London diamond and a Buenos Aires stamp sheet to a Rio favela, a Hong Kong rooftop, and a Texas motel door. If you want the decades next door, try our lists of the best crime movies of the 1990s and the best crime movies of the 1980s — or stay in the same ten years with the best thriller movies of the 2000s and the best sci-fi movies of the 2000s.
