All 34 Cillian Murphy Movies Ranked From Worst to Best | Purgatory Film Rankings

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Cillian Murphy is one of his generation’s most famous and celebrated Irish actors. From his humble beginnings in the late 1990s to worldwide recognition in the 2000s, to further acclaim in the 2010s, and, finally, to being proclaimed the 12th greatest Irish actor of all time by The Irish Times in 2020, Murphy’s career has been very interesting, to say the least. So, in this article, we’ll get ourselves more acquainted with Mr.Murphy’s work on the big screen by ranking all of his movies starting with the stinkers and finishing with the classics. Let’s go!

Red Lights is a psychological/supernatural thriller – the first time Murphy has worked in the genre – but, sadly, also one of the biggest disappointments of his career. It’s a shame because the concept had potential, and the movie does a decent job of holding your attention during its first half, but it’s during the second half that all goes to hell. A wasted effort, especially considering the talented cast the filmmakers had to work with (this is Murphy’s first collaboration with legendary actors Robert Deniro and Sigourney Weaver).

2014 wasn’t a particularly good year for Murphy; he starred in two films – both commercial and critical failures – but he did get to share screen credits with two legendary actors he hadn’t worked with before: Johny Depp in Transcendence, and Jennifer Connelly in Aloft. Aloft is an independent drama film and an international co-production between Canada Spain, and France, which got overwhelmingly negative reviews upon release, and with a score of only 16% “fresh” on rottentomatoes.com it’s Murphy’s worst-reviewed movie on the site.

It was just mentioned that Aloft, the other movie Murphy released in 2014, was his worst-reviewed film on rottentomatoes.com. Well, with a score of only 19% “fresh,” Transcendence is his second worst-reviewed on the site. Murphy teams up with Morgan Freeman – his co-star in the Batman movies – to stop Johny Depp from taking over the world. It’s an interesting concept that had some potential, but, overall, It’s a big letdown when compared to Sunshine (2007) and In Time (2011) – Murphy’s previous sci-fi movies.

Watching the Detectives is the first film directed by comedian Paul Soter, and also a good example of why, for the most part, comedians should stay away from directing movies. Despite good performances from Cillian Murphy and Lucy Liu, Watching the Detectives wasn’t a critical nor a commercial success. It got very little attention from audiences and professional critics, went straight to DVD, and it’s easily one of Murphy’s most forgettable movies.

How Harry Became a Tree is a historical drama, set in 1924 Ireland, where Murphy plays Gus, the titular character’s son (played by veteran Irish actor Colm Meaney). Mixing comedy and tragedy, with a small dose of supernatural elements, the film follows Hary, a bitter and hateful man who believes that “a person is measured by his enemies” so he picks fights with the most popular man in the village, and destroys his own family in the process. It’s Murphy’s only collaboration with Serbian director Goran Paskaljević.

Murphy’s first entry into the horror genre! Retreat has decent performances from all three leads, with enough suspense to keep us guessing, but it’s also not very ambitious or very memorable. It received a limited release in the U.K. and U.S.A. and even got somewhat positive reviews from professional critics (62% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but the general audiences were not that impressed (only 40% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and a low rating of 5.8/10 on imdb.com). Unless you’re a big fan of horror movies, feel free to skip this one.

It’s been five years since Murphy appeared in women’s clothing in the critically acclaimed Breakfast on Pluto, and in 2010, it was time to put on the dress for the second time. Peacock is a direct-to-video psychological thriller with elements of horror, where Murphy plays a Norman Bates-like, split-personality character who has a difficult time persuading everyone that he’s actually two people (both himself and his wife) after a train accident. The movie isn’t one of Murphy’s most popular and, as of this writing, it only has four reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (all of them positive), but it’s also one of Murphy’s most challenging roles.

This is the moment when Cillian Murphy showed everybody what he’s capable of. He was already very familiar with the role of Darren (nicknamed “Pig”) because he played the same role in the stage version a few years prior (1996-1998) which also happened to be Murphy’s very first acting job. It’s hands-down the best of his early performances and it won him his first award – the “Ourense Independent Film Festival Award” for “Best Actor.” The film follows the unhealthy relationship between two teenagers who call each other “Pig” and “Runt” (played by Cillian Murphy and Elaine Cassidy) and the challenges they face as they enter adulthood.

The Trench is a WWI war film about the 1916 Battle of the Somme – one of history’s deadliest battles. It’s Cillian Murphy’s second major film role after Sunburn. But, if you expect tons of action and lots of battle scenes, you’ll be sorely disappointed because the film is much more about the tension in the trenches for the 2 days leading up to the attack, rather than the battle itself. Future James Bond actor, Daniel Craig, also has a major role. It’s a decent effort by director William Boyd, but there are lots of better WWI movies out there. It’s fair to say that The Trench will not be joining Lawrence of Arabia, 1917, and All Quiet on the Western Front as a timeless World War I classic.

Murphy’s first movie shot entirely in black and white, The Party is a dark comedy about a celebration gone terribly wrong after some unpleasant secrets are revealed by the guests. It’s also Murphy’s shortest film to date with a running time of only 1 hour and 10 minutes. Besides Murphy, it features an ensemble cast of Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall, Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, Cherry Jones, and legendary Swiss actor Bruno Ganz in one of his final film roles.

Based on real people and events, The Edge of Love follows two couples – Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin (played by actors Matthew Rhys and Sienna Miller) and their troubled relationship with another married couple – Vera and William (Keira Knightley and Cillian Murphy) while they try to survive through the London Blitz in 1940 and 1941. The film got mixed reviews, but Knightley’s and Miller’s performances received praise. This is also Murphy’s first time collaborating with the famed actresses.

Murphy’s second gangster movie after Intermission (2003). Although less accomplished than Intermission, Pierre’s Bounty does offer rich and interesting characters, but it also falls prey to gangster cliches and predictability, making it look like a failed Guy Ritchie flick. It’s just an OK effort from director Ian Fitzgibbon and it doesn’t quite reach the “high art” status of filmmaking, but then again, it doesn’t try to.

Sunburn is the first full-length feature film in Murphy’s career where he has a significant role and screen time. He plays Davin, a young Irish man who flees to the United States after the girl he impregnated back in Ireland tells him that she doesn’t want to have an abortion and uses the baby to lock him into an unwanted marriage.

Although not a classic, the film has excellent acting, well-written dialogue, and was positively received by critics, so it’s kind of baffling why it received so little attention. Even some die-hard Cillian Murphy fans are unaware of its existence. So, if you are interested in discovering some lesser-known “under-the-radar” gems of cinema and you are interested in Murphy’s early work, this one is definitely for you.

In one of his early roles, Cillian Murphy plays a mental patient hospitalized after attempting suicide and is forming relationships with other troubled patients in the psychiatric hospital. An examination of depression and other mental illnesses, On the Edge delivers good acting, rich, well-written characters, and we even get a few laughs along the way. If you’re in the mood for a drama examining the dark side of the mind, this is the movie that takes you there. One of Murphy’s better early works.

Upon release, Anna got mixed reviews from critics, was a box-office failure, and was negatively compared with La Femme Nikita (1990) and Léon: The Professional (1994) – two older and similarly-themed movies by the same director (Luc Besson). The problem with Anna is not that it’s not an entertaining movie on its own, but rather that it fails to offer anything new that we haven’t already seen in other films of this variety. It’s the debut movie of professional model-turned-actress, Sasha Luss, with Murphy having a supporting role as a high-ranking CIA operative and her occasional love interest.

If 2002 was the year Murphy established himself as an A-list actor all over the United Kingdom, 2003 was the year he started his journey to international super-stardom: getting shot by Natalie Portman in Cold Mountain; getting punched by Colin Farrell in Intermission; and, finally, getting kissed by Scarlett Johansson in Girl With a Pearl Earring.

The story is based on the 1999 novel of the same name by author Tracy Chevalier, which is a fictional account of the making of the 1665 painting of the same name by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (portrayed by Academy Award-winning actor Colin Firth). The film received positive reviews and was nominated for 3 Oscars (Cinematography, Costume Design, and Art Direction) and 10 BAFTA awards. Quite an achievement!

A well-directed, well-written, and well-acted drama about the hardships and dysfunctionality of multiple families in a British working-class neighborhood, seen through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl (actress Eloise Laurence). It’s like a British version of How To Kill A Mockingbird as the story is loosely based on the famed novel by Harper Lee.

Murphy has a supporting role as an elementary school teacher who goes through hardships of his own. The film got positive reviews and it even won some prestigious awards such as “Best British Independent Film” at the 2012 BIFA Awards, the “Grand Prix” at the Odessa International Film Festival, and “The Golden Eye Award” at the Zurich Film Festival.

Probably the most polarizing of all of Murphy’s films. If you watch Dunkirk with ten of your friends, chances are five of them will think it’s a timeless masterpiece and one of the greatest war movies of all time, but the other five will already be sleeping before the end credits roll. Upon release, Dunkirk received critical acclaim, but it also wasn’t without its detractors. Some critics pointed out that the characters were undeveloped, which caused a large portion of the audience to be uninvested in the story. Not for everyone!

The best (and, perhaps, the only) way to describe the appropriately titled Free Fire is: “Everybody shoots at everybody else for 90 minutes straight, after an arms deal gone wrong.” If you want emotional depth, complex characters, and a story that will touch your heart and enrich your soul, look elsewhere. But, if you want a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously, with non-stop action and tons of dark humor sprinkled all over it, Free Fire might be just what the doctor ordered.

This romantic drama is not so much about romance as it is about affairs, marriages falling apart, and the subsequent consequences of not being able to control one’s urges. Cillian Murphy plays Jim – a man who falls out of love with his wife (with whom he has two children), and has to choose between staying with his family or starting a new life with his mistress. With great acting and an intelligent script, The Delinquent Season is the kind of movie that’s best to watch either on your own or with your significant other.

In the Heart of the Sea is a historical adventure based on the 2000 book of the same name, which is about the 1820 sinking of the Essex whaling ship. This is the event that inspired writer Herman Melville to write Moby Dick three decades later. Murphy has a supporting role as Matthew Joy, the second mate of the ship.

The film received mixed reviews and was a box-office bomb (making only $93million against a $100 million budget), but if you are a fan of Moby Dick, and would like to know more about the true events that partially inspired the classic novel, then In the Heart of the Sea may satisfy your curiosity.

After the phenomenal 28 Days Later, Cillian Murphy teamed up with fellow Irish actors Collin Farrel and Colm Meaney to deliver this 2003 dark comedy. Love, heartbreak, revenge, kidnapping, extortion, and a little kid who likes to throw rocks at passing vehicles are all the necessary ingredients to make a perfect crime film for you to watch with your friends on a Friday or Saturday night with some popcorn and bear. It received positive reviews from the audience and professional critics, including the late Roger Ebert who gave the film three-and-a-half stars (out of four). Recommended!

It’s been a while since Murphy has played a villainous role – something that doesn’t happen very often for him, but also something he is surprisingly very good at.

In Time was a financial success, making over $170 million over a $40 million budget, but it also divided the critics, who only gave it 37% fresh on rottentomatoes.com, making In Time perhaps the most underrated movie in Murphy’s filmography. But even those who hated the movie praised the concept, the visuals, and the overall aesthetics of the film.

So, if you would be interested in seeing a futuristic version of Bonnie and Clyde (Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried), fighting against an Orwellian society where everyone trades in seconds and minutes instead of cash and credit cards, chances are you’ll find In Time quite thrilling!

When it comes to movies, it’s usually Bruce Willis’ job to save the world. But, now and then, Mr.Willis has to take a break from his exhausting work and, in 2007, it was Cillian Murphy’s turn to save the day. Murphy reunites with director Danny Boyle – the man who made him a star all across the UK – and if you are familiar with Mr.Boyle’s work, you know that he mostly makes only two kinds of movies: Good and Great.

However, we have to put Sunshine in the former category, because, although the script and the acting are top-notch, it has one major flaw: It borrows way too heavily from the Alien franchise, which can result in a seen-it-all-before effect despite everything else being done right.

Two movies in 2005 helped Murphy reach a worldwide audience: Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, and Wes Craven’s Red Eye. In both films, Murphy was cast as a villain – something that was new for his career at the time. Red Eye was Murphy’s first and only collaboration with the legendary American director, and although at only 1 hour and 25 minutes – making it one of Murphy’s shortest films to date – the movie keeps the tension high from start to finish, never wasting a minute, and is considered by critics as one of Craven’s better releases. It’s great that Murphy got a chance to collaborate with the American master of horror before his passing in 2015.

In one of the most demanding roles of his career, Murphy plays a transgender woman who is looking for her mother. An adaptation of the 1998 novel of the same name, Breakfast on Pluto takes us in small-town Ireland throughout the 1960s and 1970s, seen through the eyes of Kitten (Murphy) who tries to survive in a world completely hostile to transgender people.

In preparation for his role, Murphy spent time with real transgender people so he could copy their style of talking and walking, and, in the end, he did his job so well, that he won the 2007 IFTA (Irish Film & Television Academy) Award for Best Actor. Arguably Murphy’s best performance of the 2000s!

When it comes to the horror genre, sequels are rarely as good as the originals. However, Quiet Place Part 2 is one of those rare exceptions where the second film doesn’t lose any of the quality and suspense of its predecessor and becomes a classic in its own right.

Murphy did not participate in the first film two years prior, and he is introduced as a friend of the Abbot family who are struggling for survival. In a way, his character is filling the void left when the father of the Abbot family (spoilers ahead) was killed in the first one. Critics praised his addition to the series and, ultimately, he won the Hollywood Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor.

After almost two decades of playing supporting characters for his long-term collaborator, director Christopher Nolan, Murphy finally got the lead role in this 2023 historical epic. Based on American Prometheus – the acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography by authors Kai Bird and Martin Jay Sherwin – Oppenheimer turned out to be one of Murphy’s greatest critical and commercial successes, and perhaps the role he is most remembered for. It was also released at the same time as another blockbuster hit, Barbie, which led to the so-called “Barbenheimer” phenomenon.

Although Cillian Murphy has only a smaller supporting role and a few minutes of screentime, getting his name in the acting credits alongside legends like Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Donald Sutherland was a huge step forward for him. Cold Mountain won many awards and was praised by movie critics and historians for its accurate portrayal of life during the Civil War era. It remains one of the best 21st-century movies about the American Civil War.

Ah, yes. Inception. The movie that convinced average-IQ people that they are a lot more intelligent than they actually are. This is also Cillian Murphy’s first collaboration with actors Leonardo Dicaprio, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Tom Berenger. If this was a list of the “most complex” or “most ambitious” movies in Murphy’s filmography, Inception would definitely top both lists.

However, the movie also has its fair share of flaws: It has tons of plot holes, not everything in the script makes perfect sense, it’s filled with undeveloped characters, and every other word in the script is “subconscious.” But overall, the film’s strengths surpass its weaknesses by far, and although not a perfect movie, it’s still one hell of a ride. It’s also unlike any other movie Murphy has ever done.

Murphy’s second WWII movie after 2008’s The Edge of Love, Anthropoid dramatizes the historical events of 1942, where two exiled Czechoslovakian soldiers (played by Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan), returned to their Nazi-occupied homeland and tried to assassinate one of the Third Reich’s highest-ranking officials.

Considered one of the best WWII movies released during the 2010s, Anthropoid masterfully blends suspense, drama, romance, and tragedy, and doesn’t waste a second during its two-hour running time. This is also not the first time this story has been told on the big screen, as there are at least six other movies about the same event.

By this time Cillian Murphy had already established himself as a serious actor in Ireland, but it was this collaboration with famed English director Danny Boyle that made him a star all over the United Kingdom.

One of the most acclaimed post-apocalyptic movies of the 21st Century, 28 Days Later follows Jim (Murphy), a bicycle delivery man who wakes up from a coma after being hit by a car, only to discover that a deadly virus has infected the entire Great Britain (you can see why this movie became very popular during the COVID pandemic). It’s the first movie in Murphy’s filmography that could be labeled “a classic.”

After establishing himself as one of the most bankable stars in his native Ireland and the UK, it was only a matter of time before Murphy was finally headed toward world domination. That moment finally came in 2005 when Murphy secured himself acting jobs in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and Wes Craven’s Red Eye. This was also the first time in his career that he played a villain (who knew he’d be so good at it?).

This is also the first time we get a live-action version of Scarecrow (Murphy’s character) despite the comic-book character being created as early as 1941. Better-written than its two sequels, Batman Begins can arguably be considered the greatest Batman movie of them all. Highly recommended!

The 1982 historical epic, Gandhi, followed the title character (brilliantly portrayed by actor Ben Kingsley) leading the independence movement against the brutal British Empire and guiding his people to freedom. In 1995, director/actor Mel Gibson released Braveheart – a hugely successful (although not very historically accurate) movie about the struggle of the Scottish people against the English.

Five years later, In 2000, we got an American version of Braveheart titled The Patriot, also starring Gibson, and depicting the American people’s war of independence against the UK. Finally, in 2006, we got the last major piece of the “Down-with-the-British” puzzle, this time about the Irish people and their struggle against the Crown.

Starring Cillian Murphy and actor Pádraic Delaney as two brothers joining the IRA and fighting in the Irish War of Independence, The Wind That Shakes the Barley is more than just a great movie; It’s a tale about a very important period in Irish history and, not only does it have great acting and writing, but it does an excllent job explaining the major problems Irish people had to face during the War for Independence (1919–1921) and the subsequent Civil War (1922–1923), making it the perfect movie, not only for film enthusiasts but for history buffs as well.