Greatest Modern Mob Characters: 7 Roles That Live on Through the Big Screen

Mafia movies have long been a mainstay of Hollywood cinema since the days of Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Edgar G. Robinson. Modern mob characters continue to rule the big screen today as evidenced by these seven roles in some of the most celebrated gangster films of the last 30 years.

1. Frank Lucas ("American Gangster")

Denzel Washington is at his best as the charming but ruthless head of a mafia heroin ring in this 2007 crime drama directed by Ridley Scott and co-starring Russell Crowe as the police detective determined to bring him to justice.

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2. Michael Sullivan ("Road to Perdition")

Tom Hanks enters the mafia world as an enforcer working for Chicago mob boss John Rooney, played with gravitas by Paul Newman. Sullivan tries to escape the gangster life to save his son's future, but leaving the mafia is never that easy, as Roger Ebert wrote in his 2002 review of this mob movie.

3. Bill Cutting ("Gangs of New York")

Martin Scorsese's intense gangster revenge drama is largely fueled by the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as Cutting, a ruthless killer whose mob operation rules the Five Points neighborhood in New York City. Day-Lewis "positively luxuriates in his character's villainy and turns Bill's flavorsome dialogue into vernacular poetry," according to The New York Times.

4. Joe Pistone ("Donnie Brasco")

Johnny Depp delivers one of his finest performances as Pistone, an FBI agent who infiltrates the mob as Brasco, a jewel fence, and learns harsh realities about both sides of the law along the way, according to a 1997 review by Rolling Stone.

5. Jules Winnfield ("Pulp Fiction")

Quentin Tarantino's 1994 classic mob movie was brimming with exemplary performances, according to Ebert, but Samuel L. Jackson's portrayal of the colorful hit man and cohort of Vincent Vega (John Travolta) stood out ever so slightly above the rest.

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6 and 7. Tommy DeVito and Jimmy Conroy ("Goodfellas")

Joe Pesci earned critical praise as a psychotic mob partner in a virtuoso Martin Scorsese film hailed by The New York Times as "the most politically serious and most evilly entertaining movie yet made about organized crime." Robert DeNiro played Conroy, the mafia mastermind behind its biggest heists, including a Lufthansa robbery at Kennedy Airport that triggers a litany of murders.

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