The Highest-Grossing Gangster Movie According to Guinness World Records

The Big Picture

• The Departed became the highest-grossing gangster movie ever due to its incredible star power and the presence of actors like Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jack Nicholson.
• Positive word-of-mouth and award-season buzz helped The Departed maintain its box office success with strong weekend-to-weekend performance.
• The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Traffic, and Heat round out the top five highest-grossing gangster movies, with The Departed surpassing them all in global box office earnings.

Ah, the gangster movie. One of the staples of American genre cinema. Ever since the days of James Cagney, audiences have shown up in droves to watch folks with Tommy guns and no moral compass engage in bank robberies and other ne’er do good deeds. These titles often involve lots of bloodshed, little in the way of virtuous acts, and lead performances striking in how much they revel in debauchery. However, even in a genre as long-lasting as this one, there can only be one box office champion of the entire domain. To that end, The Departed, per the Guinness World Records, holds the title for the highest-grossing gangster movie ever at the worldwide box office with a $289.6 million haul.

It’s a claim that isn’t quite surprising given how much The Departed impacted popular culture, not to mention how much incredible star power that motion picture had. But why exactly did The Departed become such a box office titan above all others? Director Martin Scorsese has made a slew of gangster movies over his career, but not all of them have become the highest-grossing gangster films in history! What separated The Departed from the rest of the pack? For that matter, what other gangster movies rounded out the top five highest-grossing entries in the genre? All these and other questions will be answered right ahead…so long as you’re not a rat.

Why Was “The Departed” Such a Massive Hit?

By the time The Departed rolled around in 2006, its main cast members were in just the right spots in their respective careers to help make the movie a must-see for film geeks and general audiences alike. Leading man Matt Damon, for instance, had reached new heights as a box office draw with the Bourne and Ocean’s movies. Leonardo DiCaprio, who initially struggled to translate his Titanic star image to further box office hits (R.I.P. The Beach) had been on a hot streak starting with Catch Me if You Can in December 2002. This started a streak of $100+ million domestic performers for the actor, with The Departed serving as the actor’s third-consecutive title to cross that box office threshold. Just those two men alone were enough to make The Departed a must-see movie…and that was before accounting for the presence of Jack Nicholson.

Not every movie Nicholson appeared in turned into a box office sensation, but by the 2000s, he had become a veteran performer audiences reliably showed up to see in movies like Anger Management and Something’s Gotta Give. Nostalgia for his seminal performances in the 1970s and 80s, not to mention the allure of seeing him bounce off the hottest actors of the modern world, had given Nicholson a new lease on life at the box office. The fact that The Departed gave moviegoers a chance to see Nicholson as a big bad (a role that had served the actor well throughout his career), made this crime thriller extra appealing to moviegoers. On top of these actors, the initially rapturous critical response to The Departed gave it an extra must-see factor for the general public.

It didn’t hurt that the feature had both lots of positive audience word-of-mouth and award-season buzz that kept it going in theaters for weeks on end. The Departed was not a frontloaded project, but rather a title that never dropped more than 33% from one weekend to the next for its first six frames of release. With those kinds of legs, it’s no wonder The Departed was able to amass a box office haul that put it above all other gangster movies. Plus, its award-season successes made it relevant to international audiences, which can sometimes give the cold shoulder to American gangster movies. The Departed was good enough to resonate everywhere, which assured its ascension to unprecedented box office heights for the gangster movie.

What Are the Other Highest-Grossing Gangster Movies in History?

Of course, The Departed isn’t the only gangster movie in the history of Hollywood to make loads and loads of cash worldwide. Per The-Numbers, The Godfather is just behind The Departed’s global haul with $270 million. Now, The Godfather’s gross comes with a bit of an asterisk, as it is way older than all the other movies in the top five highest-grossing gangster movies in history. Adjusted for inflation, its $136.3 million domestic haul (comprising more than half of its worldwide haul) would be $722 million, making it the 25th biggest movie in history in North America. That gross in modern dollars would be more than enough to surpass The Departed among the pantheon of gangster movies. Still, given that none of these other titles were adjusted for inflation, The Godfather’s $270 million stays put and so does its spot as the second-biggest gangster movie in history.

Next up on the list is Pulp Fiction with a $212.8 million gross, while Traffic is the only other “gangster” movie in history to crack the $200 million worldwide mark with a $208.3 million gross. Rounding out the top five is Heat with its $187.4 million gross, which ensures that Al Pacino has two-star vehicles in the top five biggest gangster features in history. It’s also worth noting that, among these top five movies, two, Pulp Fiction and Traffic, were produced by either arthouse or indie studios (Miramax and USA Films respectively). Heat was also financed by independent entity Regency Enterprises, though it was distributed by Warner Bros. These titles having to go to unusual places for money reflects how these morally challenging motion pictures, though often lucrative, can typically be difficult for major studios to finance. They want clear-cut good guys and bad guys, not all the moral ambiguity and uncertainty that gangster films thrive on.

Even if major studios are sometimes hesitant to finance gangster motion pictures, they can still turn a profit even in the modern world as seen by recent hits like Hustlers and The Mule. However, none of them have proven as lucrative as The Departed, not even other Scorsese movies! The only other Scorsese gangster movie to crack $100 million worldwide was the 1995 feature Casino and its $110.4 million global haul was less than half of what The Departed amassed. Even in the realm of eternally popular gangster movies, The Departed just struck a chord with audiences, which took its box office gross even higher than the likes of Pulp Fiction and Heat.

The Departed is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.

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