The latest Robert De Niro movie to grace the big screen, The Alto Knights, understands one key rule: the more De Niro you can have in your movie, the better. Hence, it stars De Niro in two roles, as duelling mob bosses – a genre and milieu that he knows better than most, having starred in several of the greatest gangster movies ever made. But that’s just scratching the surface of De Niro – compelling whether he’s playing career criminals, comedians, cackling psychos, or champion boxers. Through his collaborations with Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Mann and beyond, he’s delivered some of the most mesmerising performances ever captured on celluloid – creating indelible characters along the way.
Team Empire gathered to vote for the 10 best Robert De Niro movies, totting up the ballots to deliver a list of legendary performances in must-see motion pictures. The result is a list of tortured heroes, broiling anti-heroes, and flat-out villains – all embodied with his signature magnetic intensity. Read the full list.
10) Cape Fear
How’s this for the ultimate act of cinematic villainy: sparking up a gigantic cigar in an actual cinema, flooding the auditorium with thick smoke, all while cackling up a storm. For that alone, Max Cady would be a monster. Add in that he’s a murderous, menacing, violent maniac, and he might just be the biggest baddie De Niro ever played. He brings serious swagger to such broad villainy, stalking the Bowden family over father Samuel’s (Nick Nolte) part in sending him down – once free, he makes it his mission to bring misery upon the whole clan. De Niro sinks his teeth into Cady’s exaggerated evil – emerging from prison under thunderous skies, liberally bedecked in tattoos – all in keeping with Scorsese’s grandly gothic presentation. Sadly, there’s no rake-stepping gag in the final reel – but you have to imagine De Niro would have sold that too.
9) Casino
Has De Niro ever been better in a film? Debatable. Has De Niro ever looked better in a film? Not up for discussion. As mobbed-up Vegas power-monger Ace Rothstein, the actor rocks such a flashy array of outfits — from the coral jacket he wears in the explosive opening scene to the lemon-hued suit he buys once he falls for Ginger (Sharon Stone) – that a poster has been created showcasing 45 of his looks. With De Niro, as ever, the costumes are an extension of the psychology of the character — in one hilarious scene, he stands up from behind his desk, trouserless, as he’s too obsessive to allow them them to get creased. Part gangster, part cockatoo, Rothstein is ultimately too vain to last — and De Niro makes his downfall heartbreaking.
8) Mean Streets
Mean Streets is not Robert De Niro’s film debut — that honour goes to 1963’s Three Rooms In Manhattan, in which he played ‘Client At The Diner’ — but Martin Scorsese’s 1973 crime drama was most definitively the actor’s breakthrough role, the film that announced a generational talent. Scorsese, perhaps recognising this (and beginning a collaboration that would last decades), gives De Niro an entrance to remember, his Johnny Boy entering a red-lit bar in slow-motion, a girl on each arm, to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Jumping Jack Flash’. It is a hell of a character introduction, spine-tingling and freighted with tension, possibility and excitement: Harvey Keitel’s Charlie Cappa knows immediately that trouble is brewing — and we in the audience know immediately that a film icon is being born in front of our eyes.
7) Midnight Run
In such a huge filmography, there will always be hidden gems and underrated classics, but even so it’s something of a minor crime against cinema that Midnight Run isn’t more frequently considered among De Niro’s greatest works. It is utterly delightful, a film which manages to marry the gruff, tough-guy roles of which the actor had begun to be typecast in (in his filmography, it’s wedged between Vietnam vet drama Jacknife and gangster classic The Untouchables) with his predilection for comedy. As grumpy bounty hunter Jack Walsh, De Niro is essentially the straight man to Charles Grodin’s Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas, an accountant accused of embezzling millions from the mob, and the two actors have a brilliant, fizzling chemistry which results in one of the best buddy films ever made. As Grodin once put it: “The story basically is a guy chases another guy and a third guy chases the two guys. And then a whole lot of other people chase all of the guys.” Sold!
6) Heat
On paper, Neil McCauley could be viewed as a bit of a bore. When he’s not meticulously plotting elaborate heists, he’s engrossed in books about metal (we see him poring over Stress Fractures In Titanium — probably not a hit on Audible) or banging on about photosynthetic eukaryotes (“In Fuji they have these iridescent algae that come out once a year in the water,” he tells love interest Eady). But with De Niro stepping into his black-leather plain-toe Bally loafers (Neil could almost certainly tell you the length of the laces), he becomes electrifying; the coolest motherfucker who ever lived. And while he begins the movie as a locked box of a man — nothing getting in, nothing getting out — we witness that box slowly cracking open as love, his Achille’s heel, the thing that will both redeem and undo him, flickers into life inside. Endlessly enigmatic and alluring, McCauley is so much more than a mere criminal — whoever takes over the role for the upcoming Heat 2 has one hell of a task on their hands.
5) The King Of Comedy
In the ‘90s and ‘00s, De Niro became known for a series of disappointing comedies which wasted his talents. (You’ll notice Dirty Grandpa and Little Fockers do not trouble this list.) But back in 1982, De Niro trying comedy seemed like a bold, unexpected move. His two previous collaborations with Martin Scorsese at that point were Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, neither of which you could accuse of being an out-and-out chucklefest. You can understand the mixed response to The King Of Comedy at the time of release — few people were sure what to make of it. The benefit of hindsight allows us to see it for the gem that it is, a darkly funny satire about fame and fantasy, epitomised in De Niro’s dangerously delusional comedy fan Rupert Pupkin, who is so desperate to become a comedian that he ends up kidnapping his idol, Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis). Beloved by filmmakers, its influence can still be felt today — most notably in Todd Phillips’ Joker, which borrows not only its themes and plot points but also its De Niro.
4) Taxi Driver
The most-quoted one. Which, of all De Niro’s roles, is saying something. “You talkin’ to me?” will forever be the line associated with the actor – a snarling slice of self-aggrandisement from the deeply troubled Travis Bickle, a taxi driver whose disdain for society is on constant boil, always threatening to bubble over. He’s a man “who would not take it anymore”, a character who crawls under the skin – and De Niro inarguably crawls under Bickle’s, bringing bravado, tragedy, and terror to a figure who reflects (and rejects) the howling underbelly of ‘70s New York. In other hands, Bickle might become one-note. In the hands of De Niro – who really drove an NY cab around to prepare for the role – he’s compelling and richly layered: as sad as he is scary, as charismatic as he is creepy, both sympathetic and psychopathic. A Scorsese-De Niro-Schrader classic – and not the only one on this list.
3) The Godfather Part II
How do you one-up arguably the greatest gangster movie ever made? You cast De Niro in the sequel. While Francis Ford Coppola’s second Godfather chapter largely focuses on Michael Corleone’s continued ascendance in the late ‘50s, the prequel thread – in which De Niro portrays a young Vito Corleone as he flees Sicily and moves to New York City in the early decades of the 20th century – proves just as compelling. The rurality of his Sicilian childhood stands in stark contrast to the hustle-and-bustle of the Big Apple, and it’s in the city that Vito forges himself into a Don: falling into petty crime, modelling himself on extortionist Don Fanucci, before killing his mentor and building his own criminal empire. The scene in which he stalks and shoots Fanucci is masterful; De Niro at his cool, calm best.
2) GoodFellas
With apologies to the scene in True Lies where Eliza Dushku is heard listening to it on her Walkman, the best ever use of Cream’s ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ in cinema is in GoodFellas — soundtracking a scene where De Niro’s Jimmy Conway, standing at a bar, smoking a cigarette, eyes darting wolfishly, makes the decision to kill one of his Mafia colleagues. (“The most horrible scene in that movie,” laughed Cream bassist Jack Bruce once, “and there’s my riff!”). The sequence is legendary — De Niro doing a lot with almost nothing — and so is the performance. He’s not the film’s main character, but the actor dominates the poster and with good reason: in a story about how seductive the life of crime can be, Conway is the ultimate seducer, a wiseguy puppet-master as charming as he is vicious. And if nothing else, GoodFellas taught us never to go down an alleyway with Robert De Niro, no matter how many Dior dresses he promises us.
1) Raging Bull
Such is the starkness of Raging Bull, the entire film seems to rest on Robert De Niro’s shoulders. Sure, it’s incredibly well-directed by Martin Scorsese, edited to perfection by Thelma Schoonmaker, written with pitch-black dynamism by Paul Schrader. But De Niro is Jake La Motta, snarling and simmering with barely-repressed rage, not just dominating the boxing ring but rampaging outside it too. Scorsese, famously, had little interest in making a boxing movie – it was De Niro who was compelled by La Motta’s story, having read his memoir Raging Bull: My Story on set of The Godfather Part II. Add in Schrader, whose talent for penning violent masculinity is second to none, and you get a bleak, uncompromising watch. La Motta is a challenging protagonist – jealous, insecure, cruel. But it’s the woundedness De Niro brings to him that makes it impossible to look away. True to the film’s title, he rages.