Here is an editorial ranking of 25 Robert De Niro feature films, from landmark dramas to comedies and later work. It is not a critic-score list or an exhaustive inventory of every screen appearance: the order weighs each film’s lasting quality, De Niro’s performance and its importance to the film, its place in his career, and the range it represents.
How this ranking works
This list covers theatrical feature films with a credited acting role for De Niro. It leaves out documentaries about him, uncredited appearances, and short-form work; voice performances are included only when they are part of a theatrical feature. The scope is intentionally practical rather than a claim to account for every credit. The AFI Catalog records early credits such as Greetings (1968), The Wedding Party (1969), Hi, Mom! (1970), and Mean Streets (1973), but a catalog reference is not by itself an audited inventory of every kind of appearance.
![Killers of the Flower Moon (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51mVWS9Rg5L._SL160_.jpg)
![La Collection Robert De Niro - Il était une fois en Amérique + Les affranchis + Heat + Mission [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41U7f5LMLpL._SL160_.jpg)
![The Family [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51RFJBZ3-CL._SL160_.jpg)
The order is editorial judgment, not a mathematical score. Film quality and staying power come first, followed by the force and significance of De Niro’s work, the film’s importance in his career, and the range it adds to that career. Close placements are debatable by design. Rotten Tomatoes publishes a separate Tomatometer-based ranking, with Certified Fresh films placed first; that is a critic-aggregate lens, not a verdict on acting quality or personal enjoyment. Its page was updated October 30, 2023, not newly published in 2026.
The 25 best Robert De Niro movies, ranked
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Raging Bull (1980)
Martin Scorsese’s portrait of boxer Jake LaMotta is De Niro’s most complete screen achievement: physically transformative, volatile, and increasingly painful as the fighter’s talent turns inward. The film’s formal rigor keeps the performance from becoming mere impersonation. The Academy recognized De Niro with the Best Actor Oscar for the role in 1980.
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The Godfather Part II (1974)
De Niro makes the young Vito Corleone his own while echoing the character Marlon Brando originated. His controlled, largely Italian-language performance gives the film’s rise-of-a-criminal-family story a distinct texture beside Michael’s decline. The Academy awarded De Niro Best Supporting Actor in 1974.
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Taxi Driver (1976)
As Travis Bickle, De Niro turns loneliness and self-invention into a performance that is unsettling precisely because it never offers a comfortable explanation for its violence. Scorsese’s nocturnal New York is inseparable from that inward spiral. The Academy nominated De Niro for Best Actor.
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Goodfellas (1990)
De Niro’s Jimmy Conway is less visibly combustible than the men around him, and that restraint makes his eruptions more frightening. The film’s pace and shifting point of view make it one of the strongest accounts of criminal glamour curdling into paranoia. It also shows how effectively De Niro could anchor an ensemble without dominating every scene.
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The Deer Hunter (1978)
Michael Cimino’s film follows friends from a Pennsylvania steel town through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. De Niro’s quiet intensity gives the central friendship its emotional weight, helping the film’s long first movement resonate after its harrowing middle section. The Academy nominated him for Best Actor.
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Mean Streets (1973)
As Johnny Boy, De Niro is reckless, funny, and impossible to trust, a live wire against Harvey Keitel’s more inward Charlie. The film announced a major collaboration with Scorsese and a screen presence capable of making danger feel spontaneous rather than choreographed.
Rank #2
![Robert De Niro Collection - 4-Disc Box Set ( Heat / Goodfellas / The Mission / Once Upon a Time in America ) [ Blu-Ray, Reg.A/B/C Import - United Kingdom ]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51-bweUYtEL._SL160_.jpg)
Robert De Niro Collection - 4-Disc Box Set ( Heat / Goodfellas / The Mission / Once Upon a Time in America ) [ Blu-Ray, Reg.A/B/C Import - United Kingdom ]- Robert De Niro Collection - 4-Disc Box Set ( Heat / Goodfellas / The Mission / Once Upon a Time in A
- Robert De Niro Collection - 4-Disc Box Set
- Heat / Goodfellas / The Mission / Once Upon a Time in America
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Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Sergio Leone’s sprawling crime epic gives De Niro room to play Noodles across decades, with memory and regret shaping the character as much as the gangster plot does. Its fractured structure and long, contemplative stretches make it less immediately accessible than the films above it, but its scale and melancholy are distinctive.
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Casino (1995)
De Niro plays casino operator Sam “Ace” Rothstein as a man who believes systems can control human appetite. Scorsese’s lavish Las Vegas world gradually exposes that belief as a delusion. The film’s less intimate emotional register than Goodfellas is part of its argument: spectacle cannot stabilize a collapsing life.
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Midnight Run (1988)
This action-comedy demonstrates how naturally De Niro’s intensity can generate laughs. As bounty hunter Jack Walsh, he plays exasperation straight, making his friction with Charles Grodin’s evasive accountant the film’s engine. It remains one of the clearest demonstrations of his comic timing.
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Cape Fear (1991)
De Niro’s Max Cady is an operatic threat, but the performance is more than menace and physical transformation: he understands how Cady uses performance itself to unsettle a family. Scorsese’s remake is deliberately heightened, and De Niro’s excess fits that design. The Academy nominated him for Best Actor.
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The Irishman (2019)
Scorsese reunites De Niro with a character defined less by explosive criminal charisma than by obedience and belated reflection. The film’s patient length makes time and complicity its real subjects. The Academy’s Best Picture nomination recognized the film as a producer; it should not be mistaken for an acting nomination for De Niro.
Rank #3
Heat (Reed) (Import DVD) (1999) Al Pacino; Tom Sizemore; Robert De NIRO; Val K- Heat (Reed) (Import Dvd) (1999) Al Pacino; Tom Sizemore; Robert De Niro; Val K
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Awakenings (1990)
As Leonard Lowe, a patient who briefly responds to treatment after years in a catatonic state, De Niro balances physical vulnerability with a sharp, emerging personality. The film’s emotional impact depends on seeing Leonard as a person rather than a medical case. The Academy nominated De Niro for Best Actor.
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A Bronx Tale (1993)
De Niro’s directorial debut is a neighborhood coming-of-age story about a boy pulled between his bus-driver father and a local mobster. His performance is deliberately understated, giving the moral conflict room to belong to the younger character. It is an important counterpoint to his better-known work with Scorsese.
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The King of Comedy (1982)
Rupert Pupkin is an aspiring entertainer whose confidence is both comic and alarming. De Niro makes the character’s delusion painfully plausible, and Scorsese’s media satire has only grown more pointed as attention-seeking became easier to broadcast.
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Heat (1995)
Michael Mann’s crime drama places De Niro’s disciplined professional thief opposite Al Pacino’s detective. Its appeal lies in the tension between procedural precision and the private costs of living by rules that leave little room for attachment. De Niro’s reserve makes the character’s choices legible without softening them.
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Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
As Pat Sr., De Niro brings anxious humor and genuine tenderness to a father-son relationship shaped by routine, obsession, and family strain. The performance is a reminder that his later career includes warm character work as well as broad comedy. The Academy nominated him for Best Supporting Actor.
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Brazil (1985)
In Terry Gilliam’s dystopian satire, De Niro appears as Harry Tuttle, an independent repairman who disrupts a suffocating bureaucracy. The role is smaller than the leading parts on this list, but it uses his screen presence in an unexpected, nimble way and broadens the picture of his 1980s work.
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Jackie Brown (1997)
Quentin Tarantino casts De Niro against type as Louis Gara, a criminal whose passivity and poor judgment sit far from the commanding gangsters associated with his earlier work. The performance is deliberately low-key, serving a film more interested in lived-in character and shifting loyalties than in showy set pieces.
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The Mission (1986)
Roland Joffé’s historical drama casts De Niro as a slave trader seeking redemption in colonial South America. His physical, guilt-ridden performance gives the film a human center, though the story’s grand moral framing is less subtle than the character work.
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The Untouchables (1987)
As Al Capone, De Niro gives Brian De Palma’s stylized crime film a formidable antagonist. The role is a vivid supporting turn rather than a deep character study, but his command of the film’s heightened tone makes Capone feel like more than a historical ornament.
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Analyze This (1999)
De Niro’s gangster Paul Vitti brings his familiar authority to a comedy that depends on seeing that authority disrupted by therapy. The premise could have rested on the reference alone; the film works because De Niro plays Vitti’s vulnerability as seriously as his threats.
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Meet the Parents (2000)
As Jack Byrnes, De Niro turns the protective father into a source of escalating comic pressure. His straight-faced suspicion gives Ben Stiller’s anxious Greg Focker something substantial to play against, showing how efficiently De Niro can make discomfort funny.
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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Scorsese’s historical crime drama casts De Niro as William Hale, whose public benevolence masks a calculated role in the exploitation and murders of members of the Osage Nation. The performance is chillingly controlled, though the film’s moral and historical weight is shared across its ensemble, especially Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio. De Niro received an Academy acting nomination for the film.
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Wag the Dog (1997)
De Niro plays a political fixer who helps manufacture a fictional war to distract from a scandal. Barry Levinson’s satire gives him a different kind of operator to inhabit: composed, practical, and fluent in the machinery of public perception. Its premise remains a sharp fit for his understated authority.
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The Good Shepherd (2006)
De Niro directed and co-stars in this measured account of the formation of American intelligence work. Its cool, secretive style is a deliberate change of pace from the immediacy of his best-known crime films. The film’s ambition is evident even where its emotional distance limits its impact.
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What the ranking says about De Niro’s career
Scorsese is a recurring creative partner, not a complete explanation of De Niro’s career. The BFI’s 2019 career feature discusses their work together, including The Irishman; the Cannes profile traces films across decades, from Mean Streets and Taxi Driver to Goodfellas and Cape Fear. This list also makes room for directors such as Michael Mann, Sergio Leone, Terry Gilliam, and De Niro himself, as well as comedy and ensemble work.
The Academy Awards database records De Niro’s acting wins for The Godfather Part II and Raging Bull, and acting nominations for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings, Cape Fear, Silver Linings Playbook, and Killers of the Flower Moon. Those records mark recognition, not a quality ranking: some of his most revealing comic and supporting performances were not Academy-nominated. The Television Academy’s career biography likewise emphasizes his comedy work, including Midnight Run, Analyze This, and Meet the Parents, as well as his directing.
Why other rankings may order the films differently
A Tomatometer list answers a different question from an editorial ranking. Rotten Tomatoes sorts by aggregated critic reception and places Certified Fresh movies first; its order can change and its page’s stated update date is October 30, 2023. This list instead gives weight to De Niro’s particular contribution, a film’s durability, and career context. A viewer prioritizing comedy might move Midnight Run or Meet the Parents much higher; someone focused on formal innovation might favor The King of Comedy or Once Upon a Time in America. Neither disagreement makes one ordering objective.
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