Investigating the screen presence of the gangster since the birth of the cinema, this book begins with the silent masterpieces that shaped the genre, moves through the feisty bootleggers of James Cagney, the noir flatfoots of Humphrey Bogart, and the mobsters of the 50s. The second half of the book examines the gore-fest of gangsters in the modern era: from Bonnie and Clyde to the dapper dons of The Godfather, from Martin Scorsese's pithy wiseguys to Brian De Palma's fiery Latinos. It then moves on to Quentin Tarantino's colour-coded hoodlums of Resevoir Dogs to his Pulp Fiction.