Chinatown

Top 25 crime movies, by the Guardian and Observer’s critics

“Controversially, the cinema has always made criminals look cool,” said film critic Peter Bradshaw.

The big screen loves bad guys and, to modify Blake’s description of Milton, has often been of the devil’s party, while knowing it perfectly well. Yet crime and transgression are the stuff of drama and real life, too. Howard Hawks’s Scarface in 1932 gave us Paul Muni’s criminal sociopath Tony Camonte, brilliantly reinvented by Brian De Palma in 1983 with Al Pacino in the lead role.

The gangster genre showed how criminal networks operated inside their own fiercely moral codes and stood in direct opposition to courtroom dramas such as Twelve Angry Men, with its formal endorsement of the letter of the law. The noir genre of the 1940s and 1950s conversely found criminality to reside not in dynastic cultures or parodic societal norms but in individual acts of cynicism, obsession and desperation.

These are the 25 best crime films ever made according to the critics of the Guardian and Observer.


[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B00C2IJJLO&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Chinatown Roman Polanski]
1. [amazon text=Chinatown&template=custom_title&asin=B00C2IJJLO&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Chinatown Roman Polanski] (1974)
Director: [amazon text=Roman Polanski&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Roman Polanski] Stars: [amazon text=Jack Nicholson&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Jack Nicholson], [amazon text=Faye Dunaway&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Faye Dunaway], [amazon text=John Huston&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=John Huston]
[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B00C2IJJLO&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Chinatown Roman Polanski]
[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B00I3C1T1Q&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Touch of Evil Orson Welles]
2. [amazon text=Touch of Evil&template=custom_title&asin=B00I3C1T1Q&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Touch of Evil Orson Welles] (1958)
Director: [amazon text=Orson Welles&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Orson Welles] Stars: [amazon text=Charlton Heston&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Charlton Heston], [amazon text=Orson Welles&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Orson Welles], [amazon text=Janet Leigh&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Janet Leigh]
[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B00I3C1T1Q&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Touch of Evil Orson Welles]
[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B00U8O6IE0&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Double Indemnity Billy Wilder]
6. [amazon text=Double Indemnity&template=custom_title&asin=B00U8O6IE0&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Double Indemnity Billy Wilder] (1944)
Director: [amazon text=Billy Wilder&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Billy Wilder] Stars: [amazon text=Fred MacMurray&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Fred MacMurray], [amazon text=Barbara Stanwyck&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Barbara Stanwyck], [amazon text=Edward G. Robinson&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Edward G. Robinson]
[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B00U8O6IE0&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Double Indemnity Billy Wilder]
[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B01ACP59XA&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Big Sleep Howard Hawks]
15. [amazon text=The Big Sleep&template=custom_title&asin=B01ACP59XA&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Big Sleep Howard Hawks] (1946)
Director: [amazon text=Howard Hawks&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Howard Hawks] Stars: [amazon text=Humphrey Bogart&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Humphrey Bogart], [amazon text=Lauren Bacall&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Lauren Bacall], [amazon text=John Ridgely&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=John Ridgely]
[amazon text=Amazon&template=custom_text_price&asin=B01ACP59XA&multi_cc=1&search_text=%TITLE%&title=The Big Sleep Howard Hawks]

The Guardian (founded in 1821) is a British national daily newspaper, and the Observer (founded in 1791) is its Sunday sibling. They are amongst the most influential papers in the world. The Guardian and its journalists have won numerous journalism awards, especially in the last decades.

Source: The Guardian
Last checked on: 16 January 2016
Image: