An all time classic 60s movie glamourising the real life story of the Barrow gang who terrorised the American South in the early 30s. 'Reclaiming the American gangster movie, after it had been stolen by the Nouvelle Vague, Penn's film was so successful (and so imitated) that it inevitably met with some grudging devaluation. But it's still great, half comic fairytale, half brutal fact, it reflects the essential ambiguity of its heroes by treading a no man's land suspended between reality and fant find out more...

The classic heist movie, adapted from WR Burnett's novel. A tense, satisfyingly objective study of a gang of hardened villains who fall apart after attempting an ambitious robbery. Sounds familiar? Much imitated but never equalled, this is one of the late John Huston's finest accomplishments. find out more...

Johnny Clay has the perfect plan, to steal 2 million from a racetrack in a scheme which is as close to perfection as a robbery can be. There is just one thing Johnny hasn't reckoned on, Sherry Peatty, one mother of a femme fatale with no discernable moral compunction and a determination to make the money hers that is so strong....Johnny and his band of hardened criminals may not survive. The Killing is an early Stanley Kubrick film (in the days when a studio could still tell him what they wanted find out more...

Cagney's original gangster performance, he plays Powers, a big time mobster on the up and up. The film's impact derives from its acknowledgement of crime as partly due to poor social conditions, rather than the product of evil individuals. Cagney's role installed him as the definitive gangster hero. find out more...

A very dated but still entertaining slice of 60s kitsch. McQueen is the incredibly debonaire playboy millionaire, led to commit robbery through boredom, countered by Dunaway, the implausibly glamorous fraud investigator. Much period posing and split-screen shenanigans, with fun results. find out more...

Superbly edgy gangster movie with Cagney on top form as the mother-fixated hoodlum who confesses to a robbery to avoid paying the price for the murders he really did commit. But when news reaches his cell that his beloved Ma is dead, his already flaky mind becomes totally, and fatally, unhinged. find out more...