The 25 Best Movies Based On True Crimes

Despite what the trailer and posters might make you think, American Hustle is about more than Amy Adams' cleavage. The movie stylishly riffs on the FBI's 1970s ABSCAM sting operation, and is filled with as many twists and double-crossings as era-appropriate pop songs and swishy dance moves. Buy/rent on Amazon

It's not Steven Spielberg's best, but Catch Me If You Can ranks among the director's more entertaining movies. It tracks Frank Abagnale's rise as a wunderkind conman. Leonardo DiCaprio has never been more enjoyably charming and slimy. Buy/rent on Amazon

Zodiac wasn't necessarily the movie horror fans—or fans of David Fincher's previous Seven—expected. Instead, it's a process movie about the people who tried to unmask California's Zodiac Killer. Studiously researched and impeccably shot, Zodiac turns into something larger and more foreboding than a spate of murders. Buy/rent on Amazon

Before South Korean director Bong Joon-ho made international thrillers like Snowpiercer and Okja, he crafted this gem of a murder mystery, based on Korea's first serial murders. He brings his signature pitch-black humour to the story of two detectives in over their heads trying to solve the puzzling killings. Buy/rent on Amazon.

The best and boldest thing about The Wolf of Wall Street, possibly Scorsese's most indulgent movie, is how fun it makes its crimes look. Scorsese and writer Terence Winter condense fraudulent stockbroker Jordan Belfort's memoir down to basically the most sensational parts, putting you in the headspace of a man who sees other people's money as his own playpen. Buy/rent on Amazon

Scorsese gets three movies on this list, and deserves all of them. Casino is an underrated '90s gangster effort living in Goodfellas' shadow. The cast—Robert De Niro as a low-level mobster making his way up the casino racket (based on Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal) and Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci as the wife and friend who threaten to tear it down—is entirely perfect. Buy/rent on Amazon

An uncharacteristic movie for Spike Lee, Summer of Sam depicts the effect of the notorious murders of "Son of Sam" David Berkowitz on young men living in The Bronx in 1977. Lee seamlessly weaves the stories together, and John Leguizamo proves he's a real-deal actor. Buy/rent on Amazon

The twisted, trashy story of South Florida high schoolers who murdered a sadistic friend who had abused them, Bully is a hard one to stomach, but director Larry Clark (Kids) gives the script the no-bullshit delivery it deserves, and Brad Renfro's performance is quietly haunting. Buy/rent on Amazon

The movie inspired by a Brooklyn robbery solidified Al Pacino's legend, in all its spittle-filled, shouting glory. Buy/rent on Amazon

The fictionalised account of New York City detectives who pursue a French drug smuggler is essentially one long, glorious chase scene. But Gene Hackman's performance and the sobering ending give it moral weight. Buy/rent on Amazon

Bless them, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman made journalism sexy by embodying Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they followed trails that led them them to connect a Watergate burglary to President Nixon. Buy/rent on Amazon

One of the great horror movies of the 21st century, Wolf Creek is also the main reason I'm scared to visit Australia. Fictionalising two different Aussie backpack murderers, it follows three sexy tourists venturing into the Outback who meet a stranger and... well, you know the rest. What separates Wolf Creek from other slashers is its unflinching directness; not since Michael Myers has there been a depiction of a man made of such pure evil. Buy/rent on Amazon

While the assassination of John F. Kennedy remains officially solved, Oliver Stone's historical drama is such a persuasive conspiracy thriller that it will leave you convinced that something else was at work. Buy/rent on Amazon

Jimmy Stewart is as flawless as he ever was wavering between comic and dramatic in the Otto Preminger-directed courtroom drama, based on a novel written by a defence attorney and inspired by one of his cases. Few movies seem to grasp the moral ambiguity of the legal system while also being both realistic and tense.

Spotlight could've been really boring. Not because the story itself—about the conspiracy to cover up child sex abuse by the Catholic Church in Boston—is boring. But the Best Picture-winner chooses to focus on the perspective of the journalists who unearthed that scandal by spending a lot of time at their desks calling people up. Remarkably, director Tom McCarthy's movie manages to improve on All the President's Men by not even attempting to sensationalise what these journalists do. It unravels in straightforward, stoic conversations that gradually build into almost unbearable catharsis. Buy/rent on Amazon

One of director Brian De Palma's best movies is also one of his most conventional: Kevin Costner plays federal agent Eliot Ness, who is trying to nab Al Capone (Robert De Niro). The staircase sequence, inspired by the silent movie Battleship Potemkin, is a mini-masterpiece of suspense. Buy/rent on Amazon.

Orson Welles's last, great movie is ostensibly a documentary about an art forger, but it quickly fractures into something else. Welles intrudes on his own narrative to raise questions about the nature of authenticity. It's his own amusing, exceptionally clever take on postmodernism. Buy/rent on Amazon

If you watched In the Realm of the Senses without background knowledge, you might wonder what sick nutjob wrote it. But it's based on a Japanese woman who became national myth—a Geisha in the 1930s who strangled her boss/lover in the heat of passion and then, uh, took a souvenir from his body. In the Realm of the Senses artfully abstracts that tale, unfolding in long, largely silent, and sexually explicit takes. Buy/rent on Amazon.

Terrence Malick's stunning 1973 feature debut gives poetic shape to its inspiration, based on spree killer Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend. Sissy Spacek does justice to the dreamy, elliptical voiceover dialogue covering their courtship and crimes. Buy/rent on Amazon

Bonnie and Clyde is such a singular, monumental movie in American history that it's as famous as the couple it's about. Which is only right: Never before had a major movie in the United States addressed criminal and sexual themes so openly and without any heavy-handed judgment. The stark, bloody climax still feels revolutionary. Buy/rent on Amazon