Martin Scorsese’s movies are all about the characters. The director even joked when he was being showered with long-overdue awards for The Departed that it was his first movie in a decades-strong career that actually had a plot. All of his previous movies – and a lot of the subsequent ones – were character studies, focusing on a personal journey.
A lot of Scorsese’s movies have drawn their characters from real life, from the in-over-his-head mobster Henry Hill to the unscrupulous stockbroker Jordan Belfort, and found the humanity in criminals. So, here are the best characters from IMDb’s 10 top-rated Martin Scorsese movies.
After Hours (7.7) – Paul Hackett
Most of Scorsese’s movies have a good sense of humor – Goodfellas is a laugh riot and The Wolf of Wall Street was compared to The Hangover – but After Hours is his only full-blown comedy.
It tells the simple story of Paul Hackett trying to get home from work through New York’s SoHo district and encountering all kinds of mayhem. Griffin Dunne is a great comic foil for all the wackiness in the role of Paul.
The King Of Comedy (7.8) – Rupert Pupkin
One of Scorsese’s most underrated movies is The King of Comedy, a darkly comic study of the corrupting power of a quest for fame. Robert De Niro stars as Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring comedian who doesn’t want to spend years on the club circuit, working on his craft; he wants to skip the queue and become a superstar overnight.
He has a delusional friendship with a talk show host and plots with an autograph hunter to kidnap him and hijack his show for a night.
The Irishman (7.9) – Jimmy Hoffa
Frank Sheeran is the focal point of The Irishman, but the most compelling character is union leader Jimmy Hoffa, played by an Oscar-nominated Al Pacino in his first collaboration with Scorsese.
With his eccentric public persona and flamboyant, theatrical speech patterns, Hoffa was the ideal role for Pacino’s late-career performance style.
Shutter Island (8.1) – Teddy Daniels/Andrew Laeddis
Scorsese isn’t known as a horror director, but he has made a couple of movies that fall into the horror genre, like his chilling remake of Cape Fear and his twist-filled mystery thriller Shutter Island. The latter was heavily influenced by Vertigo in the tale of a character who keeps having the rug pulled out from under him as he struggles to understand his surroundings.
Leonardo DiCaprio played this role beautifully, initially as U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and later, when he discovers his true identity, as Andrew Laeddis. DiCaprio was just as baffled as the audience, following the plot from twist to twist.
The Wolf Of Wall Street (8.2) – Jordan Belfort
Leonardo DiCaprio is so darn charismatic in The Wolf of Wall Street that the movie was accused of glorifying Jordan Belfort’s criminal lifestyle. It doesn’t help that the man himself introduces his on-screen counterpart after he’s slipped out of facing any real consequences for his crimes as “the single baddest motherf*cker I have ever met.”
Belfort isn’t likable. He’s an abusive degenerate who scammed people out of their hard-earned cash. But he’s undeniably interesting.
Casino (8.2) – Ginger McKenna
It’s a shame that Casino is often shrugged off as the trifecta of Scorsese, De Niro, and Pesci copying what worked about Goodfellas, because it’s a completely different story, set in a completely different world, with the two actors playing completely different characters.
But the movie’s most memorable character, surprisingly, is not played by De Niro or Pesci. Rather, it’s Ginger McKenna, the wife of the De Niro character, played by Sharon Stone. No one in a Scorsese movie has a good marriage, but even by those standards, Sam and Ginger’s relationship is terrible.
Raging Bull (8.2) – Jake LaMotta
Scorsese had no interest in making a sports movie when Robert De Niro first approached him with the life story of boxer Jake LaMotta, but De Niro eventually managed to sway him and Raging Bull became one of the director’s greatest movies.
In Raging Bull, the boxing is the least important element. It’s just an outlet for LaMotta’s uncontrollable rage. He gets into all kinds of domestic disputes and gets worked up by jealous feelings and then takes it out on his opponents in the ring.
Taxi Driver (8.3) – Travis Bickle
Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver when he was living in his car, had no friends, and suffered from insomnia. So, in many ways, Travis Bickle is a stand-in for himself. He’s also a stand-in for Scorsese’s disgust at the downslide taken by his beloved New York City in the 1970s. Travis is the quintessential antihero.
The audience doesn’t have to think that his vigilante crusade is right – quite the opposite, actually – but you do believe that he believes it’s right. When he takes an arsenal of handguns to a brothel and opens fire, he believes he’s a hero.
The Departed (8.5) – Frank Costello
Jack Nicholson took the role of Frank Costello in The Departed because he’d wanted to play a villain for a long time, and he clearly relishes the opportunity. He even brought some of his own ideas to the character, like having a dildo in the adult movie theater and throwing cocaine on hookers.
Frank is technically a fictional character, but as one of the FBI’s most-wanted criminals who gets away with murder by secretly ratting on all his friends, he was heavily inspired by notorious Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger.
Goodfellas (8.7) – Tommy DeVito
Although Goodfellas is a biopic of Henry Hill, Tommy DeVito is the movie’s star player. Henry is a compelling protagonist, as a kid who grows up dreaming about being a gangster and finds himself woefully ill-prepared for the unglamorous side of mafia life, but an Oscar-winning Joe Pesci steals the show as Tommy.
From the semi-improvised “How am I funny?” confrontation to beating Billy Batts to death to the sounds of Donovan’s “Atlantis,” Tommy is at the center of all the most memorable scenes in Goodfellas.