Robert De Niro has spent nearly six decades disappearing into roles. He has played volatile gangsters and haunted veterans, a boxer who ate his way into middle age, and a Sicilian immigrant who became a crime boss. Few actors have made total immersion look so much like instinct.
Much of that work is bound up with Martin Scorsese, whose collaborations with De Niro helped redefine the crime film across five decades. But his career stretches well beyond the mob, into war dramas, sweeping historical epics, and (later) broad comedies that introduced him to a new generation of moviegoers.
To determine which of De Niro's films resonate most with audiences, Stacker ranked his feature films by IMDb user rating. Ties were broken first by number of votes, then by Metascore. The list covers the films built around a major De Niro performance, so smaller supporting turns and cameos are excluded. The resulting list runs from 1974 to 2019. Data is current as of September 2026.
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1 / 10#10. A Bronx Tale (1993)
- Director: Robert De Niro
- IMDb user rating: 7.8
- Metascore: 80
- Runtime: 121 minutes
De Niro made his directorial debut adapting Chazz Palminteri's autobiographical one-man show about a boy coming of age in a mob-run Bronx neighborhood. He also stars as Lorenzo, a hardworking bus driver trying to keep his son away from Sonny, the charismatic local boss (played by Palminteri himself). The result is a heartfelt drama more interested in loyalty and moral choices than in gunfire.
#9. The Irishman (2019)
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- IMDb user rating: 7.8
- Metascore: 94
- Runtime: 209 minutes
Scorsese's ninth film with De Niro (and their first since "Casino") plays like a long, somber goodbye to the gangster genre they helped define. De Niro plays Frank Sheeran, a truck driver turned mob hitman who claimed he killed Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Digital de-aging lets De Niro carry Frank across decades, and the film's final stretch (an old man alone with what he has done) is some of the quietest work of his career. It earned 10 Oscar nominations and won none.
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3 / 10#8. The Deer Hunter (1978)
- Director: Michael Cimino
- IMDb user rating: 8.1
- Metascore: 90
- Runtime: 183 minutes
Rather than focusing solely on combat, "The Deer Hunter" traces how the Vietnam War shatters a close-knit group of steelworkers from Clairton, Pennsylvania. De Niro anchors the ensemble as Michael, a hunter who comes home unable to reconnect with the life he left behind. His restrained performance earned a Best Actor nomination, and the film won Best Picture.
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4 / 10#7. Raging Bull (1980)
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- IMDb user rating: 8.1
- Metascore: 90
- Runtime: 129 minutes
De Niro's portrayal of boxer Jake LaMotta remains the benchmark for physical commitment. He trained with LaMotta himself, then gained roughly 60 pounds to play the fighter's bloated post-ring years. The transformation earned De Niro his second Academy Award, and his first for Best Actor.
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5 / 10#6. Casino (1995)
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- IMDb user rating: 8.2
- Metascore: 73
- Runtime: 178 minutes
Las Vegas provides the glittering backdrop for this sprawling epic about greed and betrayal. De Niro plays Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a meticulous casino boss modeled on real-life gaming executive Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. His tightly run operation comes apart under the weight of mob skimming, a volatile marriage, and his oldest friend. De Niro's cool control plays perfectly against Joe Pesci's explosive Nicky Santoro, in the pair's third film together for Scorsese.
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6 / 10#5. Taxi Driver (1976)
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- IMDb user rating: 8.2
- Metascore: 94
- Runtime: 114 minutes
Insomnia and isolation consume Travis Bickle, the Vietnam veteran turned night-shift cabbie at the heart of "Taxi Driver." To prepare, De Niro got a hack license and drove real fares around New York, flying in on weekends off from another shoot in Italy. Screenwriter Paul Schrader has credited De Niro with improvising the endlessly quoted "You talkin' to me?" mirror scene. The role earned him a Best Actor nomination.
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7 / 10#4. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
- Director: Sergio Leone
- IMDb user rating: 8.3
- Metascore: 75
- Runtime: 229 minutes
Spanning five decades, Sergio Leone's final film examines friendship, ambition, and regret through the eyes of gangster David "Noodles" Aaronson. De Niro plays him from young adulthood to old age, moving between quiet reflection and devastating intensity. The studio cut the film to 139 minutes for its U.S. release, a version Roger Ebert called "a travesty." The restored cut has since earned its reputation as a masterpiece.
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8 / 10#3. Heat (1995)
- Director: Michael Mann
- IMDb user rating: 8.3
- Metascore: 76
- Runtime: 170 minutes
De Niro and Al Pacino both appeared in "The Godfather Part II" without sharing a single scene. "Heat" finally put them face-to-face. De Niro plays master thief Neil McCauley, a disciplined professional hunted by Pacino's obsessive LAPD lieutenant, Vincent Hanna. Their diner conversation, shot without rehearsal at De Niro's suggestion, is still one of the great scenes in crime cinema. The film also lands at #3 on Stacker's ranking of Al Pacino's best movies.
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9 / 10#2. Goodfellas (1990)
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- IMDb user rating: 8.7
- Metascore: 92
- Runtime: 145 minutes
Ray Liotta narrates the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill, but De Niro quietly dominates many of the film's most memorable scenes as Jimmy Conway. The character was inspired by real-life gangster Jimmy Burke, the reputed mastermind of the 1978 Lufthansa heist. Charming, calculating, and increasingly paranoid, Jimmy embodies how quickly loyalty curdles in organized crime. Every glance and measured pause shows why "Goodfellas" remains the gangster film others are measured against.
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10 / 10#1. The Godfather Part II (1974)
- Director: Francis Ford Coppola
- IMDb user rating: 9.0
- Metascore: 90
- Runtime: 202 minutes
De Niro had to play the younger version of a character Marlon Brando had just made iconic. Rather than simply imitating him, he built a Vito Corleone who could believably grow into Brando's aging Don. Speaking almost entirely in Sicilian, he traces Vito's rise from immigrant orphan to crime boss with remarkable restraint. He won Best Supporting Actor, and he and Brando became the first actors to win Oscars for playing the same character.
