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Is it just me, or has this felt like a really long week?

But here we are celebrating Friday, and trying our best to avoid the grimmer news stories doing the rounds.

You’re doing the same. That’s why you’re here.

Join us for a look at The Guardian’s 30 best mobster movies of all time. Ranked, nogal.

I can pinpoint one main reason for the timing of this list. The Many Saints of Newark is coming out soon, starring James Gandolfini’s son as a young Tony Soprano.

That drops on October 1 – take my money.

Aside from that, The Guardian never misses an excuse to rank things (Oasis songs, Bowie songs), so it’s been a long time coming.

We’ll skip the riffraff and go straight to the top five.

5. Infernal Affairs (2002)

Forget The Departed; accept no substitute for the brilliant original, starring Tony Leung as a cop in deep cover with the triads, and Andy Lau (no relation to co-director Andrew Lau) as a triad embedded in police HQ. Each is assigned by his respective boss to flush out the other mole, leading to escalating tension and identity crises all round.

Wait, you’re telling me that Hollywood basically redid a foreign language film and turned it into a cash cow? How unusual.

I found a trailer with an English voiceover, rather than the original trailer, to help you out.

4. Once Upon a Time In America (1984)

Sergio Leone’s final masterpiece is a Jewish gangster epic, spanning 50 years, with a Proustian approach to time and memory. De Niro plays a guilt-ridden thug seeking the truth about a botched heist that left his friends dead. A Lower East Side childhood gives way to prohibition-era violence and political corruption, set to one of Ennio Morricone’s most sublime scores.

That’s de Niro before he started cashing any old cheque, and James Woods before he turned into a conspiracy wackjob:

3. The Godfather (1972)

Francis Ford Coppola’s magisterial mobster epic is packed with dialogue and scene-settings that have since been enshrined in the gangster movie lexicon. But my favourites are the little things: Michael noticing his hand doesn’t shake when he lights a cigarette, or the bodyguard’s sidelong glance as Michael’s lovely Sicilian bride prepares to start the car. None of it ever gets old.

The trailer, however, is very old.

Compare that to the trailer for The Matrix Resurrections.

Will we still be talking about The Matrix Resurrections 50 years from now?

2. Goodfellas (1990)

Ray Liotta provides voiceover as the outsider inducted into an Italian-American crime syndicate in Scorsese’s everyday story of extortion, robbery and murder by guys who aren’t as smart as they think they are. Pesci gets the showy loose-cannon role, but it’s De Niro who is the really scary one as he sits at the bar, silently plotting to kill his friends.

I watched this a while ago for the first time. It’s bloody brilliant.

The customary drum roll request.

Your number one mobster movie according to The Guardian is…

1. The Godfather Part II (1974)

Part two of Coppola’s peerless gangster saga surpasses its predecessor as it takes the Corleone family in two directions: back into the past to trace Don Corleone’s rise from orphaned Sicilian immigrant to Little Italy crime lord, and forward into the 1950s with his son, who consolidates his power but, in a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, destroys his family in his process.

It had to be.

Given that both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II make the top five, you might be wondering what went wrong with The Godfather Part III.

In short, it has been criticised to the point that director Francis Ford Coppola has been itching for a redo.

He’s since been given that chance, re-editing the final film in his epic Godfather trilogy, with The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone:

You can see the full list of 30 mobster movies ranked here.

[source:guardian]