Popular criminology, as a conceptual approach in cultural criminology, seeks to discover the causes of crime in the most tangible and real discourse related to crime that is popular discourse. Popular discourse and, subsequently, popular culture, due to its closeness and constant connection with the criminal phenomenon, make our understanding of crime and criminals more precise and profound. From centuries before the emergence of academic criminology, crime and its etiology have had an important role and situation in popular culture. Stories, legends, novels, poems, and music have played a significant role in this. But in the current world, cinema is one of the most rich and popular areas in popular culture. Although film as a cultural text is younger than other sources mentioned in popular culture, it can be said with confidence that it has contributed the most to the formation and reflection of the discourse of popular criminology, and its importance is undeniable due to its attractiveness and numerous audiences. Films create a public discourse about crime through the representation of crime and the criminal, without understanding that discourse, our understanding of crime will be incomplete. This study, with the general theoretical framework of popular criminology and a descriptive-analytical method, aims to show, while briefly referring to a few films from Hollywood and Iranian cinema, that criminology theories in cinema are neither a reflection of academic theories nor an interpretation of official criminology theories, but are independent and distinct theories that are created in the field of popular criminology.