Five Robert De Niro movies worth streaming on Netflix
Take a rough guess at how long Robert De Niro has been doing this. Go on. 30 years? 40? He has been at it for more than six decades, which feels faintly absurd when you stop to consider that he was working in the 1960s and then spent the years that followed becoming part of the bedrock of American cinema.
Mean Streets put him in Scorsese’s orbit. Taxi Driver was the one that burnt De Niro into film history, and by the time Raging Bull brought him a second Oscar, most actors would have called that a career, but De Niro had other ideas.
Then came Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Heat and Casino, and at some point, you just have to stop counting because this is getting ridiculous. Honestly, where do you draw the line? Jump forward to Killers of the Flower Moon, and De Niro is in his eighties, still very capable of holding a scene.
So if Netflix has put you in the mood for a De Niro binge, you’re hardly short of options, but these five are a very good place to start.
Five Robert De Niro movies worth streaming on Netflix:
Meet the Parents (Jay Roach, 2000)
Honestly, who else could turn meeting your daughter’s boyfriend into something that feels like a security clearance? Who else but De Niro! He plays Jack Byrnes, the retired CIA man and future father-in-law from hell, while Ben Stiller’s Greg Focker turns up hoping to charm the family before proposing to Pam. Lovely plan, eh? Not for long. Greg manages to put his foot in it at almost every turn, and the weekend starts slipping out of his hands before he can rescue it. Oof.
And Jack? Barely a twitch. That is the joke, and De Niro knows it. Greg gets more desperate to win him over while Jack seems to find fresh cause for suspicion every few minutes. Directed by Jay Roach, the film became a huge box-office hit and spawned two sequels, but the first still has the best, most sharp comic tension, and De Niro’s silences do half the work; one look from Jack and Greg is finished.
The Good Shepherd (Robert De Niro, 2006)
Now this is a special one, because De Niro is not just on but also behind the camera. The Good Shepherd was only his second film as director, after A Bronx Tale, and you just know that he hasn’t romanticised the spy business much here. No sir. Everyone seems to be looking over their shoulder and wondering who knows what.
Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a Yale man drawn into intelligence work until the job starts swallowing his marriage and whatever is left of his private life. Sounds bleak? It is, but that is the point. De Niro still gives himself a small role as General Bill Sullivan, who helps pull Wilson into the intelligence world, but he never elbows his way into the picture. And honestly, keeping himself in the background was probably the smarter move, because this was never meant to be a grand De Niro show in the first place.
Hands of Stone (Jonathan Jakubowicz, 2016)
Ooh, now we are talking: De Niro is back in a boxing film more than thirty years after Raging Bull. That’s the stuff! However, this time he stays outside the ropes, playing Ray Arcel, the veteran trainer who spots and helps Roberto Durán (Édgar Ramírez) mould all that raw aggression into something he can control inside the ring and thus become a champion.
And yes, Sugar Ray Leonard is part of the story, so you know where this is going. The film gets into their rivalry and, of course, the infamous 1980 rematch where Durán quit and “No Más” became one of those phrases boxing never quite let go of. For De Niro, there is a lovely bit of symmetry here too. He had met the real Arcel while making Raging Bull, so decades later, he comes back to the ring, playing the trainer instead of the bruiser. That’s a sweet full-circle moment, isn’t it?
The Family (Luc Besson, 2013)
By 2013, De Niro had played enough gangsters for audiences to know the drill, which is why The Family takes that familiar mobster persona into rural Normandy and asks him to pass for a harmless suburban dad. He plays Giovanni Manzoni, a Mafia boss who turns informant and gets packed off into witness protection with the family, while the FBI hangs around making sure he remembers the brief: keep your head down and, for once, try not to start anything.
That proves easier said than done. Giovanni has spent too many years dealing with problems on his own terms, and village life starts testing his patience before long. Michelle Pfeiffer plays his wife Maggie, while Tommy Lee Jones is the FBI agent left trying to stop the whole arrangement from blowing up in his face. Then comes the Goodfellas nod: Giovanni attends a local film club screening of De Niro’s own gangster classic. It is brazen, yes, but given the casting, you cannot blame the film for having a little fun with it.
The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)
And then, after all those years, De Niro and Scorsese went back to the mob. The Irishman puts De Niro in the shoes of Frank Sheeran, a truck driver who gets pulled into organised crime through Russell Bufalino and later becomes close to union boss Jimmy Hoffa. From there, the film follows Frank as he faces the consequences of his choices.
Now, yes, everyone talked about the de-ageing when the film came out, but the bigger story is how long De Niro had been chasing this one. While making The Good Shepherd, he was given Charles Brandt’s book, I Heard You Paint Houses, read it and took it straight to Scorsese. That eventually became The Irishman.