Movie-ing crime thrillers

by shalinijena

Its will be awfully hard to jot down the names of the best crime thrillers ever. It actually is not possible to make a list of them. So I decided to do it on the basis of – only one film by an actor. Yes, its hard to find women in the lead who made good stuff under this genre and when I say this statement, we must remember an exception called Uma Thurman. But, later about her.

The most tricky part when it comes to writing few-liners about thrillers is to not give away any part of the mystery. Spoilers is too big a word, if I give them away – that will make me an asshol-ica. So, I would rather not. Therefore! – Here are my five favourite crime thrillers out of the dozens of dozens that I love – thriller films based on crime, each with a unique story, plot and cast. More might come up later. For now, enjoy movie-ing! And if you already have, then enjoy reminiscing, just like I love to do.

1. Mystic River – Sean Penn – Murder Mystery – Three people, Jimmy (Sean Penn), Sean (Kevin Bacon) and Dave (Tim Robbins) come across each other after years when Jimmy’s daughter gets murdered. The film starts from that segment of their childhood when they were baseball buddies and Dave got abducted by two imposter cops who tortured and sexually abused him for four days until he escaped. It, definitely is a masterpiece thriller – hats off to one of my favourite directors Clint Eastwood again.

2. Argo – Ben Affleck – Rescue story -The most recent one in the list here. Ben affleck‘s crazy work – Argo, fuck yourself! (That’s a film pun, totally intended) A nail biting treat for you, this film is one of the most amazing reminders of a political event that literally shook America.  During the Iranian revolution when the Shah was thrown out by the Ayatollah, the Iranians of the Islamic Republic demanded the US to return Shah Pahlavi to them and to meet their demands they captured the U.S. Embassy at Tehran which lead to the popular 1979 Iran hostage crisis. 6 US citizens from the embassy escaped and took refuge in a Canadian ambassador’s house. The film is the story of a CIA agent, Tony Mendez who made a fake full-fledged movie as a plan to get them out of Iran.

(To know more about the revolution you can watch the Oscar nominated animation film Persepolis, another one of my favourite movies. For now, if you haven’t watched this recent work of genius – then you missed a lot!)

3. American Gangster – Denzel Washington – Police and drugs and biography – Ah. Now there we come to some real and the high-scorer of crime cinema based on drug dealing. What sets the story apart from the other amazing thrillers is its plot – a plot that gets its unique nature from the true story of Frank Lucas. The African-American who started out as a gangster’s driver and grew on to be one of the most influential gangsters ever. He smuggled heroin into United States directly from its producers in Thailand and that too through the American service planes returning from the Vietnam war! My man!

On the other hand is Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), an honest cop who swore to wipe the dirty business off the streets of Harlem, the drug dealer’s hub in the New York city – the city that now belongs to Frank Lucas.

4.  The departed – Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon – Police, crooks and police-crooks. I am sure you have watched and if you haven’t then someone or the other must have asked you to. Yes. The Departed is a genius father of police and crook relationship. While American Gangster is an open book at the end, The departed is even unexpected till the end! Damon is a ‘dedicated’ cop, a mole in the police department for Jack Nicholson‘s plan of organized crime and DiCaprio who because of his family ties to organized crime has been made an appointed as an undercover cop to track Jack Nicholson’s trail of crime and bring him down. A thriller is meant to be unexpected but this time, Martin Scorsese just manages to blow that mind of yours, off your head. Every scene in the beginning will make your eyebrows crease, in the middle they will give you some relief and in the end, they will make you gasp – for a while there.

5. Se7en – Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman – Two detectives, an amateur and a veteran after a serial killer. –  The film will have its bloody grip on you throughout! It perhaps is the best thriller I have EVER watched. Perfect story. Perfect background score. Too-perfect-to-find-any-flaw actors. A great film. A must watch of course. Even imdb says so. Sorry, every fucking film website, magazine and buff says so!

There  is one particular scene where Freeman and Pitt are standing outside the murderer’s doorstep which is locked and then they see a guy stop at the end of the hall carrying grocery I guess. You know something would happen, but you still don’t expect and that is when Fincher catches your attention in an offgaurd moment and following that scene you experience the best chase sequence of your cinematic life ever! And trust me – I am talking about a really serious film here but there are scenes that will make you go nuts on your stomach! Two of my favourites are: The next sequence to this chase sequence and the ‘Shardy’ one, if you know what I mean 😉 And if you don’t, then go watch the damn film!