Pierce Brosnan Names the Best Gangster Movie Ever Made
Pierce Brosnan has never exactly struggled in the cool department. He was cool as a young punk in The Long Good Friday, cool as Bond, and somehow still cool playing an aging mobster in Guy Ritchie's Mobland. So when a guy like that calls a film the greatest gangster movie ever made, you pay attention.
No surprise, it's The Godfather.
Brosnan recently named his five favorite films, and tucked between The Wizard of Oz and There Will Be Blood was the 1972 mob epic that changed cinema forever. The full list? The Wizard of Oz, The Godfather, The English Patient, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood. A mix of childhood wonder, sweeping drama, and stone-cold killers—basically a rough sketch of Brosnan's career.
He singled out No Country and There Will Be Blood for their "outstanding work by director, writer, producers, actors," and called Javier Bardem and Daniel Day-Lewis "just iconic." But it was The Godfather that hit closest to home.
"(I'm a) Huge fan of Marlon Brando," Brosnan said. "For this man to come out of the shadows playing Don Corleone was just captivating. And it never disappoints; to this day, it doesn't disappoint. That movie is still a spectacle of Americana storytelling with a performance by him which is just inspiring."
It wasn't just admiration—it was formative. Brosnan first saw The Godfather as a young man about to head off to drama school, and Brando made a lifelong impact:
"Brando was one of many—Montgomery Clift, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro. When you're moved emotionally by an actor, you want to be like them, you want to be up there... just that innocent dream that I had as a young man to make movies, to be a part of movies, never in my wildest dreams thinking I was going to come close to it. And it still has that allure."
The Godfather wasn't just a movie for him—it was the spark.
Now 20 years removed from his last Bond outing, Brosnan's been steadily reclaiming screen time in everything from the criminally underrated The Last Rifleman to Mobland, where he plays a Guy Ritchie-style mob boss opposite Tom Hardy. And he's not slowing down. He's starring in The Thursday Murder Club adaptation with Helen Mirren, and teaming up with his son for a werewolf movie called Wolf Land.
Because when you've already conquered espionage, musicals, and organized crime, battling werewolves just makes sense.