10 Best Joe Pesci Movies, Ranked

If you had to compile a list of the best “tough guy” actors in cinema history, Joe Pesci is someone who’d ultimately have to rank pretty high. With a height of 5′ 3″ and a distinctive, kind of high-pitched voice, he might not immediately seem threatening or intimidating, but he has a presence on screen that undoubtedly is, at least in most of his roles.

Pesci’s best known for playing loud and violent criminal characters, but he’s also able to channel intensity in more subdued ways, having more range as an actor than some might give him credit for. He’s not the most prolific of actors, generally choosing projects carefully and always making an impression when he does show up. These films all demonstrate his skills as an actor particularly well, and are also generally good to great movies in their own right.

10 ‘Lethal Weapon 2’ (1989)

Director: Richard Donner

It’s generally agreed that the first Lethal Weapon movie is the best of the bunch, but the second-best also happens to be the second one (and so on, until the fourth). Mel Gibson and Danny Glover returned to Lethal Weapon 2 in the lead roles, but the film also adds Joe Pesci to the mix, here playing a federal witness that the leads have to protect, and tolerate.

The comedy in the first movie came from the main characters being mismatched and kind of at odds, and then Pesci’s placed in Lethal Weapon 2 to escalate things in that regard, adding further comedy. He mostly works, and returned to feature in both Lethal Weapon 3 and 4, even if the focus remained – and perhaps always will remain – on Riggs and Murtaugh.

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9 ‘A Bronx Tale’ (1993)

Director: Robert De Niro

If Joe Pesci appears in a movie, there’s a decent chance Robert De Niro will, too, given how great of a dynamic they typically have. De Niro starred in and directed A Bronx Tale in 1993, with Pesci having a small role in the film… though unlike most of the films they’ve featured in together, they don’t interact, with Pesci’s role being brief, and at the very end of the film.

But he’s a welcome presence in A Bronx Tale nonetheless, and it’s one of a handful of notable movies Joe Pesci impresses in, despite very little screen time. The film as a whole is also pretty effective as a coming-of-age drama and a crime movie at the same time, and is valuable for showing De Niro’s pretty good behind the camera as well as in front of it.

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8 ‘Home Alone’ (1990)

Director: Chris Columbus

Joe Pesci won an Oscar for a 1990 movie where his character got punished pretty badly (more on that later), but the 1990 film that saw Pesci go through the most on-screen would be the purportedly kid-friendly Home Alone. It’s a Christmas classic in many ways, but is also chaotic and surprisingly violent, getting away with being that way because the mayhem is played for laughs.

It has holiday charm, whimsical music, and some edge, being about a young boy who’s left – you guessed it – home alone, and has to defend his family’s giant house from two burglars; one of them played by Pesci. Traps, carnage, and slapstick violence ensue, with Home Alone being extra darkly funny to watch as an adult, once you’re more aware of the more vicious criminal characters Pesci’s played in his non-family-friendly movies.

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7 ‘My Cousin Vinny’ (1992)

Director: Jonathan Lynn

A nice change of pace for anyone looking for a courtroom comedy rather than a more traditional courtroom drama, My Cousin Vinny sees Joe Pesci playing a newly admitted lawyer. He’s the titular cousin to a younger man who, along with his friend, finds himself arrested and put on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, and in a state he’s not familiar with, too.

It’s a movie where Marisa Tomei (playing Vinny’s fiancée) does arguably steal the show, but there’s also fun to be found in seeing Pesci play a lawyer, and star in an outright comedy that isn’t Home Alone. It’s something fairly new for the actor and, as mentioned before, something kind of fresh for courtroom movies overall, with My Cousin Vinny remaining a pretty good watch several decades on from its release.

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6 ‘Casino’ (1995)

Director: Martin Scorsese

A gargantuan crime movie almost three hours long, Casino takes place in Las Vegas throughout much of the 1970s, and into the ‘80s. It’s a look at how mobsters largely ran the city at that time, thanks to being in charge of various casinos, with most characters being tied to the mob in one way or another.

Joe Pesci plays a made man named Nicky Santoro, and he’s particularly volatile, fond of swearing, and violent. Really, Casino might well be one of the most brutal American crime movies of all time, not to mention one of the most oppressively bleak. It moves fast but nonetheless continually feels uneasy throughout, looking at organized crime in a particularly unflinching way that runs little risk of glamorizing the lifestyles of those involved in such a thing.

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5 ‘JFK’ (1991)

Director: Oliver Stone

Just about everyone who appears in JFK can count it among the best movies of their respective filmographies, with Kevin Costner shining in the lead role, and others like Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, and Donald Sutherland all impressing in supporting turns. The same can be said for Joe Pesci, whose appearance seems quite ridiculous at first, but does represent the rather unusual real-life figure Pesci plays.

The movie’s about a historical event… sort of. It looks at a vast conspiracy in a fast-paced and often thrilling way, investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy in an unusual way while also being a gripping look at paranoia and obsession. It’s long and might feel a little harder to watch presently, given how prevalent conspiracy theories have become, but the filmmaking craft and acting found in JFK both undoubtedly impress.

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4 ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984)

Director: Sergio Leone

Once Upon a Time in America is principally Robert De Niro’s movie, if talking about the cast members at least (there’s a strong argument to be made that the star of the show is director Sergio Leone). Everyone else is good, Joe Pesci included, but the mournful, cynical, and regret-filled story at the center needed a strong central performance to work, and De Niro delivered.

It’s a film that spans decades and shows the deterioration of a group of friends who become bootleggers during the Prohibition era, with Pesci only appearing for a short time overall. Still, as always, he makes his time on screen count, adding something to an overall excellent movie that soars across the board (even if it is a little strange how Pesci’s character ultimately exits the whole thing).

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3 ‘The Irishman’ (2019)

Director: Martin Scorsese

With some parallels to Once Upon a Time in America (including the casting of both Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci), The Irishman is another epic gangster film with themes regarding regret, death, and the uncompromising nature of aging. De Niro plays the central character, Frank Sheeran, with exceedingly great supporting performances from both Al Pacino and Pesci.

Sheeran is a man who works for various mobsters as a hitman, meaning that, unlike other Martin Scorsese movies, Pesci’s not really the violent one… at least not physically. The Irishman gives him a chance to be intimidating and a force to be reckoned with in a much quieter manner than might be expected, and he’s phenomenally intense, with the role earning him an Oscar nomination and showing that even though he’s older, Pesci still has it in him to do new and exciting things as an actor.

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2 ‘Raging Bull’ (1980)

Director: Martin Scorsese

While Raging Bull wasn’t Joe Pesci’s very first movie, it was the film that gave him breakout success as an actor, not to mention marking the first time he collaborated with De Niro and Scorsese. The film’s an intense story about Jake LaMotta, functioning as an uncompromising biographical movie that, fittingly for something that’s about a relentless boxer, pulls no punches.

De Niro is in the central role here, with Pesci playing Jake’s brother, Joey. The sheer forcefulness of these two performances can almost be too much to handle, because Raging Bull is full-on, and not at all shy about showing Jake LaMotta’s flaws as a person. The film is tough, grounded, and oftentimes bleak, but the performances are all incredible, especially from De Niro, Pesci, and Cathy Moriarty, who plays Jake’s wife, Vikki.

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1 ‘Goodfellas’ (1990)

Director: Martin Scorsese

You’d be hard-pressed to find a gangster movie with more actors in it renowned for playing wise guys, criminals, and mobsters than Goodfellas. There are too many to count, but importantly for current purposes, Joe Pesci is one of them, and his character, Tommy Devito, is perhaps the most memorable in the entire film. Pesci made enough of an impression here to win an Oscar, after all.

Goodfellas does mostly center on Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta), though, who provides a unique look at life in the mafia, always taking it in from an almost outsider perspective, given neither he nor De Niro’s characters can become made men. It’s perhaps the greatest thing Martin Scorsese ever directed (which is saying a lot), and holds up to this day as one of the most stylish, well-paced, and energetic crime films of all time.

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