Sightlines · a viewing thread

Undercover and Underworld

A run of cops, criminals, and the moles planted between them — watch these back-to-back for how loyalty curdles into betrayal across one corrupt city after another, from the Boston docks to Hong Kong to Marseille-by-way-of-New-York.

Mostly canonical crowd-pleasers with a couple of film-school essentials and one foreign-language keystone — muscular, gripping, and easy to fall into, though several turn suddenly and brutally violent, so cue up The Departed and Drive for when you want the knife to twist.

  • The Departed (2006)
  • Infernal Affairs (2002)
  • The Town (2010)
  • The French Connection (1971)
  • The Untouchables (1987)
  • On the Waterfront (1954)
  • Drive (2011)
  • The Rip (2026)
  • Serpico (1973) — The one where Pacino's honest cop becomes the most hated man in a bribe-soaked NYPD — the corruption-and-conscience keystone that rhymes with On the Waterfront's lone informer and French Connection's grimy New York, if you never got around to it.
  • Gone Baby Gone (2007) — The overlooked Boston-underworld cousin to The Town — Affleck's other Dennis Lehane adaptation, where a missing-child case rots into a moral betrayal across the same working-class blocks.
  • Eastern Promises (2007) — The under-seen one where Viggo Mortensen's mob fixer turns out to be a planted undercover agent — the exact loyalty-curdling-into-betrayal of Infernal Affairs, moved to a London Russian underworld and just as brutal (that bathhouse knife fight).
  • Infernal Affairs II (2003) — If the original Infernal Affairs landed, this is the prequel to finally pull down — the same double-agent architecture rewound to show how the cop and the gangster were first seeded on opposite sides.
  • To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) — Friedkin's own follow-up to The French Connection — a reckless Secret Service agent's counterfeiter obsession, with a wrong-way car chase and a gut-punch ending to rival it — the under-seen one for anyone who loved that film.
  • The Driver (1978) — The getaway-driver-versus-obsessed-cop chase film Drive descends from directly — Walter Hill's cool, near-wordless nocturnal LA, the ancestor to pull down after Refn's.
  • Pusher (1996) — The Copenhagen drug-underworld breakthrough from Drive's own director, Nicolas Winding Refn — a week of small-time deals curdling into panic, the under-seen root of that neon violence.
  • Pusher II (2004) — The trilogy's standout — Mads Mikkelsen's 'RESPECT'-tattooed ex-con drowning in his gangster father's world — Refn's underworld at its most desperate, for anyone who fell for Drive.
  • Pusher 3 (2005) — The aging drug-lord's worst day, Refn's Copenhagen run at its most harrowing (that basement) — the deep-cut finale if the earlier Pushers hooked you.
  • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) — The gritty 1974-New-York subway-hijack thriller that sits right alongside French Connection — cops versus criminals in a sweat-stained city, under-seen and endlessly gripping.
  • Case 137 (2025) — If Serpico and The French Connection landed, this is the recent French one to pull down next — an internal-affairs investigator working a case of police violence, cops policing cops in exactly this thread's key of institutional rot and divided loyalty.