Top 25 Crime Dramas - PART 1
What is a crime drama?
"Crime dramas are films that focus on the moral dilemmas of criminals. They differ from crime thrillers as the films generally focus on a grimmer and more realistic portrayal of the criminal world over violence and gunplay sequences." - wiki
What are features of a crime drama?
"Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre." - wiki
Is crime drama a genre?
"It is a well-established genre. Audiences have expectations that crime dramas will have high production values, a strong narrative, a good range of characters, etc." - wiki
12. Se7en
No one, and I mean no one, does nihilistic storytelling better than David Fincher. Two detectives pursue a serial killer who models his murders after the seven deadly sins. It begins as any other serial killer story, police hunting the culprit. Pressure mounts from their superiors and their personal lives become intertwined with the investigation. The worldview is pessimistic at best, completely hopeless at worst. The detectives are two men on opposite sides of their respective careers. Energetic and filled with piss and vinegar, Mills still sees the merits of humanity and hopes to defend it to the best of his abilities. His reluctant, soon-to-retire partner, Somerset, sees nothing but aimless, unbiased pain self-inflicted by society against itself. The culmination of their investigation is a clash of cop and killer with unexpected repercussions so unimaginable, so unbelievably violating and abominable it will alter the detectives to their very core. It will change their very outlook on life itself and everything they once believed in.
11. The Town
After his stellar directorial debut, Ben Affleck followed it up with what I consider to be the best work of his career, in front of and behind the lens. The Town is endlessly exciting, dramatically driven and romantically raw. It explores loyalty and the external influences that test those loyalties. It’s beautifully captured, utilizing Boston like a character thriving and exploiting all on its own. The characters are highly flawed, unstable but methodical. Ben Affleck is the leader of a group of lifelong friends turned bank robbers whose pride and egos threaten to derail everything they’ve worked for (stolen). His best friend, and most unstable of them all, James “Jem” Coughlin is both his best asset and greatest threat to surviving and leaving their life of crime behind. In pursuit is a determined FBI agent relentless in his pursuit and unforgiving in his assessment of these criminals of Charlestown.
One of my favorite films directed by one of my favorite directors is both a monument of greatness and a harsh, frustrating reminder that Hollywood is a greedy, money driven monster. What should have been the beginning of one of the best trilogies of all-time, it was criminally cut short at one. David Fincher delivered his darkest, most gorgeously shot and macabre film yet with the Dragon Tattoo. Rooney Mara delivers a career best and Oscar nominated performance as the outcast investigator, Lisbeth Salander. Her unlikely partner is Daniel Craig’s pariah journalist Mikael Blomkvist who seeks her help in the pursuit of a serial killer believed to have killed dozens of women over the past sixty plus years. It’s a hopeless, violent, nihilistic story unswayed by the depravity of humanity. The characters are morose but efficient. They are complicated but motivated. It is a tale of past transgressions but also a warning that not much has changed for the better. Evil shall with evil be expelled.
9. The Departed
From 2006 to 2017, this was my favorite movie. It’s Martin Scorsese’s return to the gangster genre but with more of an emphasis on the cat and mouse game that happens as the police pursue the criminals and the mob tries to stay a step ahead. But much like the famous line suggests, finding someone you can trust is far easier said than done - “When I was your age they would say we can become cops or criminals. Today, what I’m saying to you is this: when you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?” If you want a brief summation of what this movie is about and what it entails, look no further. It takes an entertaining glimpse into a world where the line between good and bad has been irreversibly blurred. The good guys are infiltrated by a rat and the bad guys are in the midst of a traitor. It’s simply a matter of who slips up first. And when that person does, the bodies are going to fall.
8. Nightcrawler
I maintain one of the biggest travesties of the 90s was the 1999 Academy Awards when Saving Private Ryan lost Best Picture to the forgettable, Shakespeare in Love. Another crime committed by rapist Harvey Weintstein. Thanks for nothing, asshole. Cut to the 2010s and perhaps the biggest snub of the decade occurred in 2015 when Jake Gyllenhaal wasn’t even granted a nomination for his transcendent performance in Nightcrawler. He became another creature, a wolf in sheep’s clothing if I ever saw it played out on the big screen. The denial of such recognition felt like nothing short of politics in Hollywood. He makes your skin crawl as you watch him learn and manipulate his way to success in a business that really makes you question the kind of people who would even consider such a thing to pursue. A photojournalist who listens to emergency radio chatter for a chance to catch crime scenes and accidents on camera as fast as possible in hopes of selling the footage to a local news channel. It’s sensationalism of people’s pain and anguish. And Gyllenhaal fully embodies the skin of a leach glomming onto his next meal ticket. And when the crime becomes a bit too slow for his liking? Don’t let him get any bright ideas if he’s ever around you.
If Fargo was a demonstration of the Coen Brothers’ capacity for dark humor residing within the more severe themes of murder and greed, No Country is their attempt at forgoing any of the niceties for a more straightforward, more bleak outlook on the idea of violence and that however personal it may feel, it’s reach is random and unbiased. It has no rhyme or reason for who it affects and why. If there is a theme here, it’s that it doesn’t matter and it never did. It’s going to happen all the same. In this case it just so happens to be a maniacal, sociopath named Anton Chigurh. A bowl cut, a canister of pressurized air and a suppressed shotgun are his means of intimidation and chaos and he wields them indiscriminately. In a haphazard pursuit, a sheriff turned old man becomes overwhelmed by the state of the world and his investigation of this mysterious instigator and an innocent man in over his head only emboldens the sheriff’s opinion of a world gone mad. Rather than really trying to solve the wake of violence this man leaves behind, he seems more concerned with simply surviving it and trying to convince that innocent man that things are not within his control and they never were.
6. HEAT
The action, the drama, the depravity, the execution, it’s all flawless. It’s enticing and dangerous. It’s not meant to be a desirable existence on either side of which these characters reside and yet you want to experience every moment on every side there is. These are individuals at the top of their respective games and it never points to any side that should or could win. Rather everything just plays out by their own hand and the consequences are what they are. Prison is not an option and a happy marriage isn’t in the cards. The criminals have the means and skills and the cops have the time and determination. And then of course there’s THE SCENE. A broad daylight bank robbery? Such audacity cannot go unpunished. And in the middle of a busy metropolis, heavily armed thieves and well equipped police officers engage in a mayhem of bullets, shattered glass, hot metal, blood, screams and terror. And it’s one of the greatest action sequences ever put to film. From the tactics on display to the audacious sound design with guns blaring and bullets shredding and it’s all heard with a profound intensity. And even the quiet moments, a cup of coffee between “work colleagues” is effortlessly dramatic and exhilarating. Few have or will ever do it as good, much less better.
5. The Godfather I&II
Two of the most groundbreaking films ever made and one is a sequel to the other. Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo really captured lightning in a bottle, twice no less. Sometimes the planets align and magic happens. The cast is iconic. The violence is brutal and personal. The dramatic beats are unforgettable. The cinematography tells a story all its own by visually immersing the audience into a world of an organized crime family. Its influence on the whole of cinema is immeasurable and sustaining. The character of Don Vito Corleone is made human and fascinating in his flawed humanity and it’s all because of Marlon Brando. Notoriously difficult to work with, his work speaks for itself and the difficulties endured to reach the end results are inarguably worth the effort. When you think of a cinematic masterpiece, you think of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.
4. Goodfellas
If you want a prime example of The Godfather’s influence, you have arrived at your destination. Of course this was helmed by one of the greatest filmmakers to ever live, Martin Scorsese and his need for influence is apparent but merely as a jumping off point to bigger and better things. I like to imagine Goodfellas is what The Godfather would look like if it had more of a sense of humor about the whole life of crime thing. Goodfellas is a callous, funny-in-the-right-light and violent, drug fueled journey of one man’s navigation of a life he has desired since his youth when he was caught by the police illegally selling cigarettes on the street. Rather than acting as a deterrent, it only emboldens him to go deeper into the life where it turns from smiles and running errands to beatings, shootings and outright murder-for-hire. Still, he persists. It’s fast, loose and brutal. It’s somehow scarily funny, like you should laugh if only to not piss off the guy in the suit telling his funny story. Just don’t tell him he’s funny. It might go sideways.
3. Zodiac
I couldn’t imagine a list like this that didn’t feature at least one David Fincher effort somewhere in the top ten. This one just so happens to have two in the final ten. And as much as I love his other features, like the aforementioned The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I believe Zodiac is his masterwork. It’s excruciatingly detailed and absolutely undeniable because of it. The cast is phenomenal with Jake Gyllenhaal as the busybody cartoonist turned Zodiac obsessive. Taking a more laissez faire approach to the whole serial killer thing, Robert Downey Jr plays Paul Avery, a deteriorating journalist who at one time may have been the best, but has allowed time to beat him into submission. Within the police force is the fascinated but reasonable Inspector David Toschi who, unlike Gyllenhaal’s Robert Graysmith, has the ability to walk away when necessary. More than just a story about one of the most infamous serial murderers in American history, it’s about the dangers of obsession and the singular focus of such attention that inevitably creates resentment among those seemingly on the outside of the obsessed person’s life where they were once the center of it. The cinematography is precise and gliding like an omnipresent force just stating the facts in all of its ugliness. If HEAT is one of the most exciting entries on this list, Zodiac is one of the most fascinating.
2. Prisoners
If Denis Villeneuve’s efforts like the Dune films and Arrival speak to the curiosity that resides within him, Prisoners stems from his cynical side where bad things can and will happen to good people. There is a hopelessness to Prisoners that is impossible to ignore. It should be something you watch once and then wash yourself of any influence it may have had on you. And yet I return to it regularly with enthusiasm. The story is tragic and profoundly morose. The cinematography, by the master Roger Deakins, is starkly beautiful and is captured in such a way it makes you feel the sting of the cold, the suddenness of a pouring rain and the anguish of losing a child, gone missing at the hands of someone whose intent is unknowable. The cast is top-tier with, you guessed it, Jake Gyllenhaal (He’s on this list a lot. Huh…) as an indignant but skilled Detective Loki tasked with finding two missing girls whose parents, particularly their fathers, are chomping at the bit to find those responsible and subject them to their own personal kind of justice. Time is running out and the void of those two girls will tear their families into irreparable pieces of what they once were. The ending will bring some closure but not exactly in a way one might call happily or even completely. It’s unwaveringly moody and justifiably so but it’s also immensely captivating.
Nominated for nine Academy Awards, writer/director Curtis Hanson created the epitome of the noir crime drama to which all others will forever measure themselves. Its mystery is engrossing and shocking in its calculated reveals throughout the story. The characters are uniquely motivated but desire different potential outcomes. There are good but manipulative men like rising star Ed Exley who sees results as bargaining for promotions. But at his core he is compelled to never allow his fate to become that of his father who was senselessly gunned down by an unidentified assailant. He is flawed but inherently good.
A bruiser for the police, Bud White hopes to become more than just a man to be feared for his fists and short temper but someone known to be cunning and effective as a police detective. Jack Vincennes is in it for himself and the glory that comes with being a famous detective. But Jack is beguiling as an unfulfilled shell of someone he once was that saw the merits of good police work and just simply being a good man. He lost himself along the way as corruption and greed seeped into the veins of the precinct he once believed in. Redemption may still be within his reach.
At the heart of this thriller is a tale of corruption blurring the lines between criminal and cop and the lasting effects of such a betrayal of the public’s trust. They investigate one of the most heinous murders in the history of Los Angeles and all signs begin to point fingers back at those entrusted to protect and serve. It will take the action of a brave few still able to find the good within themselves to purge the city and their precinct of a long residing sickness that has infected the entire police force far too long.
This movie is brilliant and perpetually entertaining. The characters are a driving force both good, bad and morally ambiguous. The story is dark, action packed and wholly absorbing. It’s endlessly rewatchable. While I could probably re-examine and rearrange this list a hundred different ways, I’m happy with the end results. L.A. Confidential is pure, cinematic excellence.
There it is. The list of the best (my favorite) crime dramas. I could make a list of this genre alone a hundred movies long but I don’t have that kind of time or desire to do such a thing. So 25 will have to suffice. As always, my name is Chase unless you hate everything about this ranking. In which case, say it with me, my name is Jimmy Palmquist. (I’m not sure when I’ll stop with this stupid joke but in the words of the gladiator, Juba, “...not yet. Not yet.”)
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