Road to Perdition (2002)

Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner's comic is a pulpy gangland revenge story. Sam Mendes kept its spine, a mob enforcer on the run with his young son, and dropped the pulp action for something somber and close to operatic. Tom Hanks plays the hitman against type, Paul Newman is the boss he has always treated as a father, and Jude Law turns up as a very unsettling rival. It is the best case for showing a skeptic that a crime comic can carry a grown-up prestige drama without losing its gangster bones.