"So they're offering me a boardmembership... do you want to up the bid to an ambassadorship?"

With today’s news that Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich was essentially auctioning off President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant senate seat to whomever could promise him and his wife the best career boosts, the Windy City’s historical tendency towards corruption has come full circle (how fitting that such news should break on International Anti-Corruption Day).

With that history in mind, the folks at Gawker offer this Top 5 list of corrupt Windy City officials in film: The Best Chicago is a Dirty and Corrupt Chicago. The list deals mostly in classical Hollywood noir and revisions thereof:

• Scarface (1932)

• The Public Enemy (1931)

• The Sting (1973)

• The Untouchables (1987)

• Chicago (2002)

Sadly, the astute writers at Gawker overlook some crucial entries in the film history of Chicago’s shadowy underworld. For instance:

Road to Perdition (2002

Sent on the run from a vengeful Illinois mob boss with his son, Tom Hanks stars as a gun for hire alongside Daniel Craig, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman (playing with his earlier role in the aforementioned The Sting) and Jude Law. Though there’s no high-powered trickery of the sort revealed in today’s news in this elegant Sam Mendes period piece, there are plenty of shootouts, vintage cars and creepy underworld characters.

Miller’s Crossing (1990)

Though Chicago is never acknowledged to be the crime-riddled Midwestern metropolis where this stylish Coen Brothers gangster movie is set, it’s the most likely candidate. Here, corruption runs throughout the ranks: the mayor and police chief are pawns to be terrorized and manipulated by the mob’s deep pockets, and elected officials can ask just about any price when offering their services to organized crime. Set during prohibition, its politicians suddenly don’t seem like figures of such a distant era.

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Aside from a general distrust of the woefully ineffective Chicago PD and other caricatured authority figures, let’s not forget that Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood (Dan Akroyd) first undertake their reunion show to help raise funds for a school being shut down by the city. If not a thoroughly corrupted regime, The Blues Brothers‘ Chicago is one of crippling bureaucracy and moral corruption: how could they put the good nuns out of work and knowledge-hungry children out of food for though?

The Dark Knight (2008

Filmed in Chicago and featuring relatively minimal digital skyline-dressing compared to Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne’s Chicago-as-Gotham has become the city of controlling crime bosses and corporate and official corruption that was put on display today with the arrest of Governor Blagojevich. Now we can add current events-topicality to the list of strengths in The Dark Knight’s favor heading into Oscar season.