Introduction
Cold-blooded murder? It looks to the audience that any character could be a possible suspect. However, in the end the murderer is someone least looks like one. A bit of blood, a pale corpse, clever and a funny detective using future technology and fast DNA tests, plus an innocent looking murderer with weird reasons to complete his actions – the plot of the criminal movie doesn’t have to be more complicated than this, but the criminal movies have and will always interest a wide range of audience.
Quite often the films are taking closer looks on a criminals mind. The crime and the criminal are many times glorified in the criminal movies.
History
Why are the criminal movies so interesting for us? Why are we sometimes on the bad guys’ side and we do not want the justice to happen? Or is the justice happening, when the criminal, who has been treated wrong in the past, is now getting his revenge? Maybe it’s interesting for us to watch something that is so far from our own actions. However, not all the criminal movies are the same, so the analyses of why we like them can be far more complicated. Who is the hero? Maybe once in a while we just want to watch a refreshing view of a hero that is not all that good?
Features
The criminal movie itself is a category in all the film genres. And the criminal movies can be falling under a few different subcategories. For example there are crime comedies, like the Coen brother’s Fargo. These films have black humor, where the funny things often arise from things like death.
There are also police procedurals like Stray Dog by Akira Kurosawa. Many TV series’ like CSI Miami are falling under this subcategory. The criminal movies like these showing a lot of police procedurals like interrogations, evidence gathering, autopsies, search warrants etc.
Tips and comments
The crime thrillers are simply thrillers, where an act of crime is playing a big role. An example of this subcategory is Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan Demme.
Film noir was a popular genre from the 1940’s to 1960’s. There are problems to define the term film noir, but those movies highlighting sexual motivations and cynical attitudes are considered to be in the genre. Robert Benton’s Twilight is Neo-noir film.
Film’s like Oceans 11 by Lewis Milestone are lighter and more entertaining Heist films that are following a group of criminals attempting a crime.
Hood films are dealing with issues and culture of African-Americans. An example of this genre is boyz n the Hood by John Singleton.
Legal dramas are mostly concentrating on the trial after the criminal has been already caught. 12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose is an example of these types of movies.
The famous movie Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola is subcategorized into Mob film. The characters in these films are involved with the Mafia.
So, the hero can be the criminal, the police, the lawyer, the victim, the next-door neighbor of victim or even the pet cat of the criminal if so chosen.
