Scorsese rules gangster film poll

Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas has been voted the greatest gangster movie ever made.

The director reigned supreme after film critics were asked to compile a list of the top 30 gangster movies for Total Film magazine.

Goodfellas, the 1990 film directed by Scorsese and starring Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro, was placed top of the list with Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather: Part II in second place.

Goodfellas - which won 32 awards, including a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Joe Pesci - tells the real-life story of Henry Hill and his pivotal role in the New York mob in the 1960s and 1970s.

The poll of movie experts - conducted to mark the release of Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp as notorious American criminal John Dillinger - placed French classic Army In The Shadows in third place.

Coppola's The Godfather was fourth, with Michael Mann's Heat in fifth place. Director Quentin Tarantino came both sixth and tenth with his cult classics Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

Miller's Crossing was seventh, Once Upon A Time In America was eighth and Brian De Palma's Scarface, starring Al Pacino, was ninth.

Jamie Graham, deputy editor of Total Film, said: "Goodfellas splices an incredible true-life story of the rise-and-fall of an American gangster with breathless stylistic brio. It demystifies the inner workings of the mob and pulses with violence, humour and energetic action."

The full list of the 30 greatest gangster movies appears in the latest issue of Total Film magazine, on sale June 24.