The Best Crime Movie Each Year Of The 2010s

Published Oct 12, 2026, 3:55 PM EDT Shawn S. Lealos is an entertainment writer who is a voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has written for Screen Rant, CBR, ComicBook, The Direct, The Sportster, Chud, 411mania, Renegade Cinema, Yahoo Movies, and many more. Shawn has a bachelor's degree in professional writing and a minor in film studies from the University of Oklahoma. He also has won numerous awards, including several Columbia Gold Circle Awards and an SPJ honor. He also wrote Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers, the first official book about the Dollar Baby film program. Shawn is also currently writing his first fiction novel under a pen name, based in the fantasy genre. To learn more, visit his website at shawnlealos.net. Crime movies are one of the oldest genres in Hollywood, going back to the silent era as well as into the Golden Age of cinema, with names like James Cagney becoming major stars along the way. In the 1940s, things changed to more of a film noir aesthetic, and then the 1970s introduced more of a gangster movie format. By the time the 2010s rolled around, the movies took a little bit of everything and created something new and fresh. The 2010s saw an incredible mix of crime movies, and they all seemed to approach the genre from different places. In terms of storytelling, these included tales of thieves trying to pull off a perfect heist, criminals looking for revenge against the people who wronged them, and detectives trying to solve complex murder cases. They also approached their releases in different ways, with some as blockbusters, others as indie releases, and some made for streaming platforms. There are several great repeat actors in the best crime movies of the 2010s, with Jake Gyllenhaal appearing in no fewer than three of the best released throughout the decade. These movies also earned Oscar recognition, with cinematographer Roger Deakins nominated for at least two of the best in the genre. It also helped solidify the best directors working today, with Denis Villeneuve and Rian Johnson directing minor masterpieces. 10 2010 — The Town Released in 2010, The Town is a movie directed by Ben Affleck, in which he also stars as a Charlestown bank robber named Doug MacRay. This movie takes Affleck back to Boston, where he has told several of his best stories, and it follows a crew of thieves who are planning a major heist at Fenway Park. Complications arise when Doug falls for a victim of one of his previous robberies, although she has no idea he was involved. The cast is great, with Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, Chris Cooper, Titus Welliver, and Pete Postlethwaite working with Affleck. While Affleck received a lot of award recognition for directing his political thriller Argo two years later, The Town remains one of his best-directed films, and it still stands as one of the best heist movies of the 21st century and the best crime movie of 2010. 9 2011 — Drive Nicolas Winding Refn is a polarizing director whose art-house style is often hard for mainstream audiences to latch onto. However, he released his most mainstream movie in 2011 with the crime thriller Drive. Based on James Sallis' novel of the same name, Ryan Gosling stars as an unnamed stunt driver who also moonlights as a getaway driver. When he helps a neighbor, he is pulled into a violent conspiracy. The cast includes Carey Mulligan as the neighbor he helps, Oscar Isaac as her abusive husband who has been released from prison, and actors like Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, and Ron Perlman in supporting roles. The movie is very violent, and it is unique in that Gosling's Driver barely has any dialogue in the entire film. Drive has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score, and it earned one Oscar nomination. 8 2012 — End of Watch End of Watch is a David Ayer crime movie from 2012 that stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as LAPD partners Brian Taylor and Miguel Zavala. The movie is shot in a pseudo-documentary style while also using a found footage approach as it follows the two LAPD officers as they patrol South Los Angeles. When they run across a Mexican drug cartel on a routine patrol, they find their lives in danger. End of Watch premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and received its theatrical release just two weeks later. It was a box office success and has an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics. The main praise went toward the ground-level authenticity thanks to a unique use of found-footage techniques. Gyllenhaal and Peña also received praise for their chemistry. 7 2013 — Prisoners Denis Villeneuve has become one of the most celebrated directors working today thanks to his incredible work on the Dune franchise. While he will next join the James Bond franchise, his previous work showed how great he was, with sci-fi masterpieces like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, as well as his crime movies. The first of these came in 2013 with Prisoners, the story of a father searching for his missing daughter. Hugh Jackman stars as the grieving father who wants answers, while Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the police officer investigating the case with very few leads. When Jackman's character takes the law into his own hands, he becomes a vigilante, but it is easy to sympathize with his plight. Villeneuve was also smart enough to give Prisoners with an ending that doesn't wrap things up cleanly. 6 2014 — Nightcrawler Image by moviestillsdb Jake Gyllenhaal appeared in yet another of the best crime movies of the 2010s with the 2014 thriller Nightcrawler. In this movie, Gyllenhaal stars as a petty criminal named Lou Bloom who sees photographers and video crews filming accidents and selling the footage for money. He decides this could be a great way to make money, and he starts selling grisly footage to local television stations. The movie shows Lou to be a terrible person, and when he decides to start causing accidents so he will be the first on the scene, he takes his criminal activity to another level. The movie has a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score, and Gyllenhaal was praised for his performance. It is a smart movie that shows how the media can help create criminals, while also playing out as a satire about the voyeuristic news culture. 5 2015 — Sicario The 2015 crime movie Sicario had two of the most important modern-day filmmakers working on it. Denis Villeneuve directed the film, based on a script by Taylor Sheridan. In this movie, Emily Blunt plays an idealistic FBI agent who joins a shadowy task force that is targeting drug cartels on the border of the United States and Mexico. What she learns is that the task force commits as many atrocities as the cartels. Josh Brolin stars as her handler, while Benicio del Toro plays a former prosecutor turned assassin who works for the CIA. The movie was a box office success, and it has a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score. It also received three Oscar nominations, including one for cinematographer Roger Deakins. Its look at the morally compromised drug war earned praise, and it received one sequel, with a second on the way. 4 2016 — Hell or High Water In 2016, Taylor Sheridan was back with another crime movie, this one directed by David Mackenzie. In Hell or High Water, Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as two brothers who rob banks to raise money to save their family's land, which is under foreclosure. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham are the two Texas Rangers who are pursuing them and trying to stop the thieves. This is an interesting crime movie because it is a case where the bad guys are fighting against an unfair banking system in a world that doesn't care about them. The Texas Rangers are out to stop them, but it is hard to consider them the good guys, as the two thieves serve as the real protagonists. It is a neo-Western in the post-recession economic depression, a modern Bonnie and Clyde story. 3 2017 — Baby Driver Cult-favorite director Edgar Wright made his addition to the crime movie genre with the 2017 film Baby Driver. The movie stars Ansel Elgort as Baby, a young getaway driver who is working off a debt to a crime lord played by Kevin Spacey. The movie uses music as a part of its driving force, as Baby is an almost unstoppable driver as long as he has his headphones on and is listening to his playlists. When Baby meets a young waitress (Lily James) and falls for her, he wants out, but leaving this life of crime behind is not easy. The supporting cast is incredible, with Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, and Eiza González as the thieves who come after Baby when the heist goes wrong. Baby Driver has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score and was a box office success. While it's not one of Wright's best films, it is a masterful crime movie. 2 2018 — Widows Widows takes an interesting look at the crime movie genre because it focuses on the wives of a group of criminal thieves. When a heist goes wrong and a group of thieves is killed, a crime lord focuses on the wives of the thieves to pay off the debt their husbands left behind. It is then up to the four Chicago women to finish the heist their dead husbands couldn't finish. What makes Widows work so well is the cast. Viola Davis is brilliant as the woman who takes control and leads the other women on the heist, where she has her own plans for the money when all is said and done. This is a crime movie that looks at political corruption and is a commentary on race and class, and it takes the crime genre to a more prestigious place than its contemporaries. 1 2019 — Knives Out In 2019, a lightweight crime movie arrived that changed the mystery genre forever. Rian Johnson directed Knives Out and gave Daniel Craig the role of a lifetime as Benoit Blanc, a detective styled after the classic whodunit detective Hercule Poirot from the Agatha Christie novels. In this first movie in what has become a three-movie franchise so far, he has to figure out who killed a crime novelist. All the Knives Out movies offer an all-star cast, and this first one is no different. The suspects include the author's family members, including characters played by Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, and Toni Collette. This was also a breakout role for Ana de Armas. The movie has a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, was a box office success, and its sequels were ​​​​​produced by Netflix.