Warner Bros. continues its celebration of its 90th anniversary with the release of an astounding set of its best gangster movies broken into two parts: Contemporary and classic.
The Ultimate Gangster Collection: Classics and Ultimate Gangster Collection: Contemporary are both out now on Blu-Ray and for all you fathers out there… start hinting now!
The iconic studio is marking their big birthday all year. We have previously reviewed impressive sets that include (our favorite) Warner Bros. Best Pictures, Warner Bros. Musicals and Warner Bros. Presents 20 Riveting Romances.
The classic gangster collection includes two from icon James Cagney -- The Public Enemy and White Heat. Also in the set is the Edward G. Robinson starring Little Caesar and The Petrified Forest starring Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis.
The bonus DVD on that set features the astounding documentary Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Drama. The doc explores the building of the genre that became the gangster film and Warner Bros’. important place in that history as well as how those films influenced filmmakers today. Most notable of those directors that possess a clear lineage to the gangster past are Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann and Brian De Palma.
Those there are well represented with their work on the Ultimate Gangster Collection: Contemporary collection. Further enhancing this powerful set is the inclusion of Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Goodfellas (both starring Robert De Niro) and his Oscar winning film The Departed. De Palma is represented with his award-winning The Untouchables, a film that chronicles the Eliot Ness effort to bring down notorious gangster Al Capone.
And what contemporary gangster movie set would be complete without Mann’s stunner, Heat. The film was the first to feature De Niro and Al Pacino sharing screen time. Proof of their collective power is seen in this clip from the Ultimate Gangsters Collection.
Movie Fanatic is just slightly obsessed with this genre, and speaking to the power of this Warner Bros. collection, many of the films contained in the set are on our Top 10 Gangster Movies of All-Time!