As many are aware, Dad Movies are not typically focused on the theme of fatherhood. However, they do often feature paternal figures – mentors, male role models, and the like – within the narrative. Angels with Dirty Faces is a crime drama that exemplifies this well, with a gangster named Rocky (James Cagney) forming a bond with a group of boys upon the request of his childhood friend, now a priest (Pat O’Brien), despite Rocky’s unwillingness to abandon his criminal ways. He is mainly focused on intimidating an old associate (Humphrey Bogart) into paying him hidden money, highlighting a stark contrast between Rocky’s potential influence on young hustlers and his own destructive tendencies. Cagney, Bogart, mouthy kids, crime, and basketball; this could be the epitome of a 1930s Dad Movie. If younger dads find the title familiar, it might be because of its parody in the fake gangster movie from Home Alone: Angels with Filthy Souls. Just to be clear: Dirty Faces might be as elusive as the fictional Filthy Souls, currently unavailable for streaming, but you can find it on disc, and whisper it, but sometimes hard-to-stream movies show up on the Internet Archive.

where to watch angels with dirty faces

One of the most successful adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s work, this film noir directed by Robert Siodmak brings Hemingway’s short story to life, extending beyond the written events with a narrative filled with flashbacks surrounding an insurance probe into a slain boxer’s death. The nonlinear timeline and tormented boxer seem to have influenced Pulp Fiction, but regardless of whether the dad in question is a Tarantino enthusiast, this remains a gritty, riveting tale with stellar performances by Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner.

where to watch the killers

Director Howard Hawks had an affinity for showing men (and women) in working camaraderie, so no decade-spanning list of Dad Movies would be complete without one of his. It turns the siege story of a sheriff (John Wayne) who must hold off a land baron’s flunkies in order to keep the baron’s murderous son imprisoned until a U.S. Marshal arrives into a hangout western. It’s both a favorite of Quentin Tarantino’s and the inspiration for the John Carpenter film Assault on Precinct 13, only with more singing interludes. If part of the Dad Movie essence involves killing a lazy afternoon, this 140-minute western, which in both style and theme serves as a rejoinder to the taut McCarthyism allegory High Noon. There are plenty of valid points to debate over which picture is better; Rio Bravo, with its sprawl, comic relief, hangout vibes, and John Wayne factor, seems like inarguably more of a Dad Movie.

where to watch rio bravo

Director John Sturges made a number of other classics of this era, like The Magnificent Seven, or, for the more thoughtful dads, Bad Day at Black Rock, while for some, the go-to Dad Movie of the 1960s is probably The Dirty Dozen, a different 150-minute World War II ensemble thriller, from director Robert Aldrich. But there’s something particularly defiant and inspiring about the spirit of soldiers plotting an escape from a German POW camp that puts this Sturges-directed sorta-true story over the top, sort of like Steve McQueen zooming over a bunch of buses on a motorcycle (which is noticeably not part of The Dirty Dozen, and a key feature of a movie where a Dad should be able to go “hey, check this out,” possibly as many as 10 minutes before it actually happens).

where to watch the great escape

Dirty Harry might be the obvious choice here, but let’s give dads a little credit and allow that maybe they could prefer a violent cop movie that’s a little more ambiguous about whether the cop in question is actually a hero. Gene Hackman’s “Popeye” Doyle is a racist, furious man, pursuing a drug bust with single-minded mania. It’s thrilling, the way it fuels one of cinema’s all-time greatest car-chase scenes, and frightening if you stop to think about the potential collateral damage Doyle is capable of inflicting. Because he’s played by Hackman, he’s both charismatic and believably scary; the thrills are there, and vicarious, but Hackman and director William Friedkin give them a discomfiting edge. It’s an up-to-the-minute thriller that kinda-sorta became a form of historical (but maybe not that historical) fiction as the decades passed.

where to watch the french connection

Kevin Costner is a major figure in Dad Cinema – which, as we know, does not necessarily mean playing famous dad roles so much as parts that dads like to see themselves in. It’s telling, I think, that Costner’s famous role in Field of Dreams as a farmer who receives a mystical message to build a baseball diamond is more son than father. His Ray has kids in the movie, but the emotional lynchpin is the ghostly ballplayers and, eventually, Ray’s own departed, baseball-loving dad, who populate Ray’s ballfield. In between Costner’s more athletic turns in Bull Durham and For Love of the Game, he tests his acting chops even further by playing a regular guy who likes baseball but doesn’t necessarily aspire to conquer the game, even for so much as the crack of a homerun or a perfect pitch. Costner has often been compared to classic movie stars like Gary Cooper, and this is probably the closest he’s come to that kind of quiet perfection. (For a bonus sports picture depicting a complicated father-son relationship with a little less sentimentality, check out Spike Lee’s He Got Game.)

where to watch field of dreams

Was anything in the late ’90s more enjoyable than catching any given part of The Fugitive on cable? (Well, maybe not if you came in at the slightly deflating final 15 minutes and realized you missed all the good stuff.) A dad-flipping-channels classic chase movie, it has just enough pop-culture bona fides (Harrison Ford starring in an adaptation of a classic TV series), conspiracy plotting, crusty comic relief (courtesy of Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones), and pulse-pounding tension to give a whole movie’s worth of satisfaction even if experienced in eight-minute chunks with frequent commercial breaks. What makes it particular Dad perfection, I think, is the degree of methodical process Ford’s Richard Kimball goes through in matters small (eluding the cops when he returns to Chicago) and larger (proving his innocence in the murder of his wife). There’s a practical to it that feels so much less farfetched than any number of its fellow ’90s movie-star vehicles.

where to watch the fugitive

The historical epic is a go-to Dad Movie subgenre, but these lavish productions can become tedious pageantry so quickly and easily. Master and Commander takes place in the early 19th century – when oceans, as the famous intro card says, are battlefields! – and mounts some of the most impressive ship-to-ship battles ever seen on screen, led by Russell Crowe deep into his prestige-movie-star era. This feels like it should be watched from a real good armchair.

where to watch master & commander

James Mangold may be the most Dad-coded director currently working; his films include a Bob Dylan biopic, a Johnny Cash biopic, one of the only good non-Rocky Stallone movies, and a Russell Crowe/Christian Bale western. He even made a superhero movie about being a regretful but badass old guy. His crowning achievement in this field – not his best movie, but his Dadliest – may be Ford v Ferrari, a racing-car saga that’s barely even about car racing, but designing and building the damn cars. It’s also a confident delight, with two perfectly pitched movie-star performances and a dash of history.

where to watch ford v. ferrari

where to watch no time to die

The obvious 2020s pick would be Top Gun: Maverick. But does anyone need to be told to watch Top Gun: Maverick three years after it set box office records? On the other hand, another slightly melancholic legacy-style sequel featuring a familiar, beloved hero in middle age only did typical Bond business when it was finally released in 2021. But No Time to Die is a perfect Dad Movie for anyone looking for slightly more emotional engagement than a typical Bond installment, while maintaining the country-hopping production value we all expect from this series. You get newfangled in-continuity Sad Bond who’s in love with Léa Seydoux (and is a secret dad himself!), old-fashioned charming Bond flirting with Ana de Aramas in Cuba, and cool stuff with motorcycles and cars.