A wrongfully expelled Harvard undergrad moves to London, where he is introduced to the violent underworld of football hooliganism.

Urban lawlessness of New York City street gangs is the theme of Walter Hill’s violent and influential drama. When a powerful gang leader is shot during a meeting between all of the city’s gangs, the blame is pinned on a Brooklyn clan known as the Warriors. Now members of this small bunch face a night of terror, as they try to return to Coney Island with an army of thugs hot on their trail. It’s a long subway ride from the Bronx to Brooklyn, and anything can happen!

The gangster Nino has a gang who call themselves Cash Money Brothers. They get into the crack business and not before long they make a million every week. A cop, Scotty, is after them. He tries to get into the gang by letting an ex-drug addict infiltrate them, but the trial fails miserably. The only thing that remains is that Scotty himself becomes a drug pusher.

With its unpaved streets and rickety buildings, Jericho, Texas is an unlikely outpost for gun-toting mobs from Chicago. But with Prohibition in full swing, tweed-suited rum-runners have corrupted and terrorized this sleepy border town. Civil law is dead. Like their bosses in the Windy City, the leaders of Jericho’s rival crime families are warring for control of a lucrative bounty of booze: truckloads of 100-proof, making their way from Mexico to a thirsty nation’s illicit network of gin joints and speakeasies. Fatefully, a mysterious loner, Smith, passes through looking for a place to spend the night, but quickly decides to cash in on the action. He cleverly hires himself out to each gang while remaining loyal to no one but himself. A soldier-of-fortune with his own agenda, he betrays both sides to the other in a bold attempt to destroy the bootleggers and rescue what remains of Jericho’s shell-shocked residents. But a traitor cannot live among mercenaries without being exposed and killed.

Two New York City cops go after amateur crooks who are trying to rip off the Mafia and start a gang war.

Martin Scorsese explores the life of organized crime with his gritty, kinetic adaptation of Nicolas Pileggi’s best-selling Wiseguy, the true-life account of mobster and FBI informant Henry Hill. Set to a true-to-period rock soundtrack, the story details the rise and fall of Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian New York kid who grows up idolizing the “wise guys” in his impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood. He begins hanging around the mobsters, running errands and doing odd jobs until he gains the notice of local chieftain Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino), who takes him in as a surrogate son. As he reaches his teens, Hill (Ray Liotta) is inducted into the world of petty crime, where he distinguishes himself as a “stand-up guy” by choosing jail time over ratting on his accomplices. From that moment on, he is a part of the family. Along with his psychotic partner Tommy (Joe Pesci), he rises through the ranks to become Paulie’s lieutenant; however, he quickly learns that, like his mentor Jimmy (Robert DeNiro), his ethnicity prevents him from ever becoming a “made guy,” an actual member of the crime family. Soon he finds himself the target of both the feds and the mobsters, who feel that he has become a threat to their security with his reckless dealings.

Loosely based on the life of Al Capone, Howard Hawks’s SCARFACE is one of the most shocking and powerful gangster films ever made, setting the standard for Hollywood screen violence for years to come. Tony ‘Scarface’ Camonte (Paul Muni) is an enforcer for Johnny Lovo, an ambitious gangster who wants to combine all the liquor rackets in Prohibition-era Chicago into one crime empire. To achieve this goal Tony embarks on a reign of terror, threatening citizens and clawing his way to power until he is the number one mobster in town. Muni’s fierce performance established the model for the Hollywood mobster, a violent yet charismatic figure. Censorship battles over the film delayed its release for two years, and resulted in additional moralizing scenes and an alternate ending. Visually dynamic and provocative, SCARFACE, produced by Howard Hughes, is one of the best films of the 1930s and the forerunner of the modern gangster film.

Cidade de Deus (City of God) is a housing project built in the 1960’s that–in the early 80’s–became one of the most dangerous places in Rio de Janeiro. The tale tells the stories of many characters whose lives sometimes intersect. However, all is seen through the eyes of a singular narrator: Buscapé, a poor black youth too frail and scared to become an outlaw but also too smart to be content with underpaid, menial jobs. He grows up in a very violent environment. The odds are all against him. But Buscapé soon discovers that he can see reality differently than others. His redemption is that he’s been given an artist’s point of view as a keen-eyed photographer. As Buscapé is not the real protagonist of the film–only the narrator–he is not the one who makes the decisions that will determine the sequence of events. Nevertheless, not only his life is attached to what happens in the story, but it is also through Buscapé’s perspective of life that one can understand the complicated layers and humanity of a world, apparently condemned to endless violence.

To some he was a folk hero; a man raised on the streets of New York City whose success had earned him the lifestyle of the rich and famous. To others he was a killer; a ruthless manipulator who murdered his way to the top of America’s most powerful criminal organisation.

Before gangs had guns… they fought with guts.

Jack Carter, a mob enforcer living in Las Vegas, travels back to his hometown of Seattle for his brother’s funeral. During this visit, Carter realizes that the death of his brother was not accidental, but a murder. With this knowledge, Carter sets out to kill all those responsible.

In 1863, Amsterdam Vallon returns to the Five Points area of New York City seeking revenge against Bill the Butcher, his father’s killer.

From the director of SCUM, THE FIRM stars Gary Oldman as the leader of a gang of football hooligans called the Inter-City Crew. A brutal look at football violence and urban frustration, Alan Clarke’s controversial film features unflinching social commentary.

Frankie is a young lad on the run from the high-rise ghetto of South London, to a new life in the Costa Del Sol with nothing but a tin stuffed full of cash in his hand luggage. Having no idea that this delivery of cash, to super-suave playboy and ex-con Charlie will change his life forever, he soon becomes one of the gang, and finds himself drawn into a flamboyant and violent world of organised crime. This is one film that will blow you away…

Starring: Vincent Regan, Ross Boatman, Lee Ross, Frankie Fraser, Mirella D’Angelo
Director: J.K. Amalou
Studio: ENTERTAINMENT IN VIDEO
Run time: 83 mins
Certificate: 18
Genres: Drama
Languages: English
Released: 22/10/2001

Brief synopsis of Hard Men

Tone’s life is carousing through the city with his mates, Speed and Bear, representing Underworld boss, Pops Den. When an ex-girlfriend appears with a daughter he never knew he had, his life is transformed into one of lullabies and nappies. Pops has been like a father to Tone so he decides to eliminate him…

As a major heist approaches and with betrayal all around him, a respected crime boss has to summon all his street nous and killer instinct as he fights for survival.

As deeply cool and urbane as its unnamed hero, LAYER CAKE follows the precise, articulate XXXX (Daniel Craig) as he manoeuvres through what he intends to be his last business deal in modern-day London. His business…Drugs. On the cusp of turning 30, XXXX has amassed a personal fortune, deftly avoiding the violence and ugliness so many others in his trade fall prey to by following a strict personal code defined by discretion and clean detachment from the products he sells. Just as XXXX is poised to cash in and get out, Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), the top layer of this particular underworld cake, hands down two tasks: find Eddie Temple’s (Michael Gambon) drug-addicted daughter, and unload a mass of ecstasy stolen in Amsterdam by the sloppy, loud Duke (Jamie Foreman), who is exactly the type of wannabe gangster that XXXX has spent his career avoiding. Further complicating matters is Tammy (Sienna Miller), a sexy young blond who XXXX meets in a club and can’t get off his mind.

Chilling portrait of a Sicilian family’s rise and near fall from power in America and the passage of rites from father to son. Based on a novel by Mario Puzo.

Two boyhood friends grow up to become the kingpins of a prohibition-era criminal empire until their own greed and ambition cause their downfall. Based on Larry Grey’s novel, “The Hoods.”