10. “Chopper” (2000)
Getting on two decades into Eric Bana’s Hollywood career, and we’re used to seeing him mostly as tormented, straight-laced heroes (“Troy,” “Munich,” “Hulk”), so it’s always shocking to go back to the film that launched him to stardom, “Chopper,” and sees the sheer, terrifying energy of him, something that subsequent filmmakers have been pretty bad about tapping. Andrew Dominik’s film is a biopic of charismatic, terrifying Australian criminal Chopper Read, who begins the film incarcerated, chops his ears off to get out of the toughest block, is released, is cleared of murder, and ends up a best-selling author despite being, as he puts it, “semi-bloody-illiterate.” Bana blows you away, but Dominik’s as much the star as he is — playing with time and tone and embracing the contradictions of the man. Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Bronson,” which is heavily indebted to this, is better remembered today, but “Chopper”’s the real masterpiece.
9. “Drive” (2011)
In some ways, “Baby Driver” feels like a sort of flip side of Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” — both films share a particular aesthetic drawn from past crime classics, a killer soundtrack, an emphasis on vehicular action at least in part, and a deceptively sweet central love story. But “Drive” is entirely its own beast as well: a neon-soaked, synth-infused instant cult classic with a shocking level of brutality going hand in hand with its romanticism. Refn’s film, about a stunt driver who doubles as a getaway driver, who becomes caught in the life of his neighbors, is best remembered for its distinctive, already much-copied, style, but there’s real substance there too, with a cast of characters (brought to life brilliantly by Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston et al) who feel like they’ve walked in from a classic crime novel. Now the hype and the douchebags in scorpion jackets have dissipated, it still remains a high watermark in the genre of late.
8. “Inherent Vice” (2014)
Paul Thomas Anderson has flirted with crime movies a few times, particularly early on (“Hard Eight” being the prime example), but the closest he’s come to fully embracing it is with his adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice.” A shaggy dog neo-noir influenced by Altman’s “The Long Goodbye,” among others, it sees stoner P.I. Doc (Joaquin Phoenix) brought into a convoluted case by his ex (Katherine Waterston) in 1970s California. It’s in some ways PTA’s most difficult movie — the plot is almost beyond the point, and it’s so soaked in an atmosphere that it feels like you’re getting high even if you go in stone cold sober — but in others one of his most accessible, thanks to the gloriously light comic touch. It’s a movie that we’re still unpacking nearly three years on from release, and we look forward to returning to it for decades to come.
7. “25th Hour” (2002)
Spike Lee’s so good at making the straight-up crime film (see “Clockers,” “Inside Man”) that it’s almost a shame he doesn’t do it more often. His masterpiece in the genre, at least for now, remains “25th Hour,” his adaptation of “Game Of Thrones” showrunner David Benioff’s novel about the last day of freedom of Monty (Edward Norton), a mid-level drug dealer about to go in for a long stretch. The film gained added resonance by accident, shooting in the aftermath of 9/11 and capturing the mournful mood of the time, but it would have been terrific even in happier circumstances: the whole cast (most notably Brian Cox, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper) do phenomenal work, Lee’s at his most mature and accomplished, the script is clever and, well, novelistic, and there’s an almighty emotional punch at the end.
6. “Memento” (2000)
Though he’s gone on to blockbuster after blockbuster since we first got to know Christopher Nolan as a crime director, and it’s long infused his work, from the Michael Mann influences in “The Dark Knight” to the heist elements of “Inception.” But unless he abandons megabudgets entirely, he’ll likely never make a pure crime movie as utterly perfect as “Memento.” It’s a revenge movie, but one utterly unique in that, as Leonard (Guy Pearce) attempts to track down the killers of his wife despite a goldfish-like memory that requires him to tattoo clues on his body. Oh, and it’s told backward, starting at the end and ending at the beginning. It could be gimmicky or quirky on a number of levels, but the rigorous, and witty (those who dismiss Nolan as humorless need to take another look at this one), screenplay, the playful performances and the director’s eye (already coming on leaps and bounds from low-budget debut “Following”) make every piece feel part of an endlessly surprising whole.
5. “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” (2005)
Though he’s since picked up Oscar nominations (for “A Prophet”) and even a Palme d’Or (for “Dheepan”), to us, Jacques Audiard’s finest hour to date (at least until his incredibly promising English-language debut “The Sisters Brothers” hits next year) is “The Beat That My Heart Skipped.” A riff on James Toback’s 1978 film “Fingers,” it stars Romain Duris as a young man involved in the shadier end of real estate due to his even shadier father (Niels Arestrup) who hopes to change his life and follow his dreams and become a concert pianist just as the family business comes under threat from a Russian gangster. The signature Audiard blend of tenderness and toughness is put to its best use here, thanks in large part to Duris’ soulful eyes, and as faithful as it is to Toback’s film, it improves on it immeasurably.
4. “No Country For Old Men” (2007)
Even knowing the high quality of the Coen Brothers’ work in general, and knowing their love for crime fiction, no one was quite prepared for “No Country For Old Men.” Their first adaptation (it’s adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel), it maintained the greatest qualities of their earlier work — dry wit, careful plotting, unforgettable characters, bursts of ultraviolence — but with a darker, more apocalyptic mood than ever before. Even though its story of the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, and the men pursuing the money that Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) has taken, is set in 1980s Texas, it somehow feels predictive of the world that we’ve ended up in a decade later in some strange ways, and we’re sure it’ll only continue to resonate further over time.
3. “Zodiac” (2007)
As this fall’s Netflix series “Mindhunter” will likely remind us again, David Fincher has had a career-long fascination with serial killers, but if he’s ever able to top “Zodiac,” it’ll be a remarkable thing. A sprawling near-three epic about, quite frankly, the impossibility of certain answers, it takes a rigorous look at the so-called Zodiac killer, still never caught decades after he terrorized the San Francisco Bay, and the cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) who made it his life’s mission to find him. It’s a great movie about journalism, for one — arguably the best since “All The President’s Men,” but that’s just the start of the film’s wonders, from Fincher’s never-better craft to a deep bench of performers (there’s wonderful work even in tiny roles from people like Brian Cox and John Carroll Lynch), to the way that James Vanderbilt’s screenplay parcels out information. A perfect portrait of obsession from our most obsessive filmmaker.
2. “City Of God” (2002)
If we entered the 21st century thinking that there was little new to say about the crime movie, post-Tarantino, we were swiftly proven wrong by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s “City Of God,” a vibrant, rich epic of visceral, assured beauty. Adapting a book by Paulo Lins (and it feels highly novelistic), the film essentially tells the stories of the favelas of Rio De Janeiro, through the eyes of Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), a sweet, honest boy who’s always done his best to stay away from the gangs that virtually rule the place. Influenced by, but not beholden to, Scorsese (it finds its own frantic, sun-kissed style), it breaks out of genre conventions to paint a socio-political portrait of a place, while still telling an utterly compelling story (or really, a whole miniseries worth of them). It’s funny, exciting, terrifying, sad and thought-provoking: basically everything a movie should be.
1. “Memories Of Murder” (2004)
From “The Host” to “Snowpiercer” and this week’s “Okja,” Bong Joon-Ho has proven himself to be one of the most exciting filmmakers alive, mashing up genres and tones with a willful disregard to convention. And his best movie to date — one of the 21st century’s best movies, really — is “Memories Of Murder,” a procedural police drama like few others. It’s based on the true story of the hunt for Korea’s first serial killer, and the three detectives (Kim Sang-kyung, Song Kang-ho and Kim Rwe-ha) in charge of investigating the case. Bong’s ever light touch finds levity even in such dark subject matter, but his genius (aside from that that he has for framing and camera movement, which can compete with anyone in the world’s) is that he can play so much of the film for comedy and yet still find such a rich vein of melancholy and loss to the film. It’s a fascinating companion piece to “Zodiac,” and while Bong charitable and understandably named Fincher’s film as one of the greatest ever made in the 2012 BFI poll, we think he made the superior picture, as its placing no doubt suggests.
Crime is one of the busiest cinema genres, and so understandably we could have easily gone to 100 and still left out films we loved. Among those that nearly made the cut were James Gray’s “The Yards,” John Michael McDonagh’s “The Guard,” list-topper Bong Joon-Ho’s “Mother,” “The Man From Nowhere,” Jim Jarmusch’s “Ghost Dog” and “The Limits Of Control,” Guy Ritchie’s “Snatch,” Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River,” the “Mesrine” double-bill, Oren Moverman’s underrated “Rampart,” Cary Fukunaga’s “Sin Nombre,” and the unusually strong UK pic “Gangster No. 1,” which launched Paul Bettany’s career.
There was also “Capote,” “The Brothers Bloom,” “The Lookout,” “Bronson,” “The Ice Harvest,” “Spring Breakers,” “Amores Perros,” Ben Affleck duo “Gone Baby Gone” and “The Town,” “The Pledge,” “Elite Squad,” “Miami Vice,” “Road To Perdition,” “Starred Up,” “Paid In Full,” “Place Beyond The Pines,” “Nine Queens,” “Insomnia,” “The Snowtown Murders,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “The Nice Guys,” “Way Of The Gun,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Better Luck Tomorrow,” “Bad Santa,” “The Killer Inside Me,” “The Counselor” and “Kill List,” not to mention a few movies that weren’t quite crime movies in our mind, movies like “In The Bedroom,” “Looper,” “Minority Report,” “Carlos,” “Spotlight,” “Elephant, “Stranger By The Lake,” “L’Enfant,” “Michael Clayton,” “American Honey” and more. And we suspect, with a little more time for it to settle in, that “Baby Driver” will find a place pretty high on this list. Go see it this weekend to see why.