The 1990s were a rich period for the film industry. Not only because Hollywood was unafraid to just director-driven visions, but because independent cinema was going boom. Thanks in part to festivals like Sundance — started by legend Robert Redford — new voices were gaining financial resources to make the films they wanted. Crime films especially started making their way. 1995 alone saw crime epics like Se7en, Heat, and Casino released.

The slate of crime films is unprecedented in that even notable works from well-known directors, like Sidney Lumet, Spike Lee, and John Frankenheimer, are often forgotten about in their oeuvre. These are a list of films often left out of the conversation when talking about the best of this rich period of well-made crime movies. Indeed, here are the most underrated crime movies from the 90s, ranked.

10 Dead Presidents

Dead Presidents
Miramax Films

The Hughes Brother's second film is an epic relative to their debut Menace II Society, which was a gritty, violent look at the dangers of coming of age in Compton. Claustrophobic in the film's set-up where the neighborhood is as far as the characters get, Dead Presidents transports us to the jungles of Vietnam and how the hardships of being a veteran scarred by America's violence transform the way people live. Starring Larenz Tate, Chris Tucker, and Freddy Rodriguez as three friends who come of age together, but lose a bit of themselves as they turn into one life-altering bank heist, the Hughes Brothers' epic and tragic look at Black life under the guise of an America grappling with its changes is as harrowing as it is a well-directed film that never glorifies violence.

Related: Best Neo-Noirs of the 90s, Ranked

9 Laws of Gravity

Laws of Gravity
RKO Pictures

A debut film that had a sure but free-wheeling hand in the streets of Brooklyn, Nick Gomez’s Laws of Gravity is a film about low-level crooks with no money in their pockets trying to hit the big score. Starring the incredibly underrated Peter Greene as the slender, braggadocio and Edie Falco before her turn as Carmela Soprano, Gomez quickly goes from scheme to scheme. Showing the empty back alleys and desolate streets to backdrop the desperation of the poor degenerates. With the tragedy baked in, Laws of Gravity is a small but resounding tale of criminal negligence.

8 Fresh

fresh
Miramax Films

A complex portrait of a young drug dealer who busts “stupid dope moves” with his kid friends, Fresh sees a young chess prodigy use the skills his father (played by Samuel L. Jackson) teaches him to keep his skin safe and his fate preserved as he hustles to amass enough money to get out of the drug game. In a revelatory child performance from Sean Nelson as the titular character, Fresh is one of the more complex portraits of a kid drug dealer put on screen.

7 Night Falls On Manhattan

Night Falls On Manhattan
Paramount Pictures

Sidney Lumet has a filmography full of films that take complex, nuanced looks at corruption-plagued institutions and how that affects the individuals caught up in its machinations. So, it's easy to see how Night Falls On Manhattan falls by the wayside with regard to his career work. Nevertheless, it's as sharp as any with an epic script written by Lumet. The film stars Andy Garcia as a hard-nosed District Attorney born into a family of cops. Touted early as a golden boy, he soon finds his family tied up in illegal and diabolical practices. Muddying the case that made Garcia famous, and guided by diabolical shadow hands and people who abuse their powers, Lumet’s film shows the sadistic nature of power abused.

6 Clockers

clockers
Universal Pictures

Originally meant to be a Martin Scorsese picture that he happily gave to his good friend Spike Lee so that Scorsese could go off and make Casino, Clockers is the perfect precursor to the HBO Series The Wire. Lee perfectly captures the essence of failing to escape your neighborhood while also tapping into the work of racist police officers who care little about the lives they're attempting to destroy. All shot in the vibrant, gripping style Lee is known for with an incredibly charismatic debut performance from Mekhi Phifer as the drug dealer “Strike” caught in the middle of a murder conspiracy while battling the cops and his ruthless kingpin boss played by Delroy Lindo.

5 The Limey

the limey
Artisan Entertainment

A moody genre piece during Steven Soderbergh’s creative resurgence, The Limey is an existential crime thriller with an unstoppable Terrence Stamp at the center. The style of the film is part of Soderbergh’s European aesthetic, quite in line with Ocean’s 12 with its narcotic, hazy atmosphere where time feels suspended. Stamp plays Wilson who shows up to Los Angeles hell-bent on vengeance after learning of his daughter's death. Plunging into the seedy criminal underworld he survives a near-death beating. Only to come back as an unstoppable force, taring through the sunny L.A. landscape, soaked in blood.

Related: Best Steven Soderbergh Movies, Ranked

4 Ronin

ronin
MGM Distribution Co.

John Frankenheimer’s car-chase crime flick written by the mighty pen of David Mamet, Ronin is a mechanized piece of adrenaline that turns the streets of Europe into guerrilla warfare. Following a group of thieves led by Robert De Niro and Jean Reno who take the job from an Irish outfit, the double-crosses and betrayal ensue. Besides the obvious -isms from Mamet, he imbues the dialogue with his classic writing, and Frankenheimer's decision to ignore all digital VFX at the time to go totally analog technology makes the film whip. The car chases, the explosions, De Niro firing a bazooka through the sunroof of an old BMW, the film is a sight to behold.

3 State of Grace

state of grace
Orion Pictures

A textured, murderous, and economical crime thriller set against the changing Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood as the Irish mobsters grow prickly about the evolving demographics, State of Grace is a forgotten gem of the 90s. Starring Sean Penn who comes home after disappearing for nearly a decade, he rekindles with his old friends who are now full-time criminals. Played by a greasy Gary Oldman and led by the formidable Ed Harris with John C. Reilly and John Turturro rounding out the stellar supporting cast. Penn quickly finds himself embedded in the criminal enterprise while remaining undercover. As good as 90s crime films come State of Grace is hard to find on streaming and physical mediums.

2 The Funeral

The Funeral
October Films

Abel Ferrara has made a career of making small-budget, depraved, violent, and philosophical crime films. His most underrated is another film that’s extremely hard to find on streaming services and physical copies. The Funeral evolves around a crime family of combustible characters — starring Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Vincent Gallo, and Isabella Rossellini — who are at odds with the changing ways of life in 1930s New York. Surmounted by an incredible amount of grief as the family grieves the loss of one of their own, Ferrara shows how even in the dying embers of a funeral, you're still just a cog in the unforgiving criminal machine.

1 A Simple Plan

A Simple Plan
Paramount Pictures

Sam Raimi’s typical artful B-movie horror fervor finds pockets of terror in this small-town, noir-ish crime thriller where a bag of money tares a group of friends apart in A Simple Plan. In the snowy confines of a Fargo-like tale, Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton reignite their screen partnership (One False Move) as two friends with different lives. However, after finding a large sum of cash in a crashed plane, the accident sets their life on a very different course. What Raimi excels at is elevating the ludicrous nature of the violence that ensues and also creating a heightened sense of dread and paranoia as the friends try to conceive a way to secure and spend the money. A bloody travail through a life where financial security is a burden.