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Crime Drama

A type of drama that focuses on the lives, actions and moral dilemmas of criminals, often stressing the notion that crime doesn't pay. Unlike crime thrillers, these films usually offer a more serious, grim and realistic portrayal of the criminal environment, emphasizing character development and complex narratives over bloody action sequences, gunplay and violence. Closely related to the gangster subgenre, crime drama differs in the often low-key portrayal of the criminal protagonists, rather than the flash and heroic conventions dominating the former. Sometimes, in the case of The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Once Upon a Time in America and Goodfellas, films can contain elements of both, starting as gangster pictures and settling into slower, more contemplative narrative conventions of the crime drama. Often in these films, protagonists are looking for a way out of the criminal lifestyle, only to find themselves trapped. Many of the finest pure examples of this brand of filmmaking arrived following the post-war years, after the arrival of modernism in film. They first were found in film noir (Out of the Past, The Killers, They Live by Night). Other later examples include In Cold Blood, Dog Day Afternoon and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

Major Works
Rating
Year
 Title
 
 Director
  9 Stars 1946 The Killers   Robert Siodmak
  9 Stars 1932 Scarface   Howard Hawks
  9 Stars 1931 The Public Enemy   William Wellman
  9 Stars 1943 Ossessione   Luchino Visconti
  9 Stars 1950 Night and the City   Jules Dassin
  9 Stars 1945 Mildred Pierce   Michael Curtiz
    9 Stars 1934 Manhattan Melodrama   W.S. Van Dyke
  9 Stars 1930 Little Caesar   Mervyn LeRoy
  9 Stars 1967 In Cold Blood   Richard Brooks
  9 Stars 1990 GoodFellas   Martin Scorsese
  9 Stars 1974 The Godfather Part II   Francis Ford Coppola
  9 Stars 1972 The Godfather   Francis Ford Coppola
  9 Stars 1967 Bonnie and Clyde   Arthur Penn
  9 Stars 1973 Badlands   Terrence Malick
  8 Stars 1997 Hana-Bi   Beat Takeshi Kitano
  8 Stars 1995 Cyclo   Tran Anh Hung
  8 Stars 1994 Heavenly Creatures   Peter Jackson
  8 Stars 1959 Pickpocket   Robert Bresson
  8 Stars 1983 L'Argent   Robert Bresson
  8 Stars 1979 Vengeance Is Mine   Shohei Imamura
    8 Stars 1949 They Live by Night   Nicholas Ray
  8 Stars 1960 Shoot the Piano Player   François Truffaut
  8 Stars 1939 The Roaring Twenties   Raoul Walsh
  8 Stars 1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice   Tay Garnett
  8 Stars 1950 In a Lonely Place   Nicholas Ray
  8 Stars 1958 I Want to Live!   Robert Wise
  8 Stars 1990 The Grifters   Stephen Frears
  8 Stars 1948 Force of Evil   Abraham Polonsky
  8 Stars 1975 Dog Day Afternoon   Sidney Lumet
  8 Stars 1938 Angels With Dirty Faces   Michael Curtiz
  7 Stars 1998 The General   John Boorman
  7 Stars 1997 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil   Clint Eastwood
  7 Stars 1997 Affliction   Paul Schrader
  7 Stars 1993 Sonatine   Beat Takeshi Kitano
    7 Stars 1996 Les Voleurs   André Téchiné
  7 Stars 1996 Hard Eight   Paul Thomas Anderson
  7 Stars 1995 La Cérémonie   Claude Chabrol
  7 Stars 1995 Clockers   Spike Lee
  7 Stars 1944 The Woman in the Window   Fritz Lang
  7 Stars 1962 Salvatore Giuliano   Francesco Rosi
  7 Stars 1968 La Femme Infidèle   Claude Chabrol
  7 Stars 1973 The Friends of Eddie Coyle   Peter Yates
    7 Stars 1949 The File on Thelma Jordon   Robert Siodmak
  7 Stars 1947 Brute Force   Jules Dassin
    7 Stars 1957 The Brothers Rico   Phil Karlson
    7 Stars 1949 The Bribe   Robert Z. Leonard
  7 Stars 1959 Compulsion   Richard Fleischer
  7 Stars 1937 You Only Live Once   Fritz Lang
  7 Stars 1978 Violette Nozière   Claude Chabrol
  7 Stars 1988 The Story of Women   Claude Chabrol
  7 Stars 1967 The St. Valentine's Day Massacre   Roger Corman
  7 Stars 1964 Séance on a Wet Afternoon   Bryan Forbes
  7 Stars 1945 Scarlet Street   Fritz Lang
  7 Stars 1949 The Reckless Moment   Max Ophüls
  7 Stars 1936 The Petrified Forest   Archie Mayo
  7 Stars 1990 Miami Blues   George Armitage
  7 Stars 1991 Let Him Have It   Peter Medak
  7 Stars 1990 The Krays   Peter Medak
  7 Stars 1976 The Killing of a Chinese Bookie   John Cassavetes
  7 Stars 1986 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer   John McNaughton
  7 Stars 1956 The Harder They Fall   Mark Robson
  7 Stars 1990 The Godfather Part III   Francis Ford Coppola
  7 Stars 1936 Fury   Fritz Lang
  7 Stars 1946 Detour   Edgar G. Ulmer
  7 Stars 1948 Criss Cross   Robert Siodmak
  7 Stars 1970 Prestupleniye i Nakazaniye   Lev Kulidzhanov
    7 Stars 1935 Crime and Punishment   Pierre Chenal
  7 Stars 1977 The American Friend   Wim Wenders
  7 Stars 1971 10 Rillington Place   Richard Fleischer
  6 Stars 1999 L'Humanité   Bruno Dumont
  6 Stars 1998 Buffalo '66   Vincent Gallo
  6 Stars 1997 Assassin(s)   Mathieu Kassovitz
  6 Stars 1996 Bound   Andy Wachowski
  6 Stars 1995 Casino   Martin Scorsese
  6 Stars 1994 Little Odessa   James Gray
  6 Stars 1993 Carlito's Way   Brian De Palma
  6 Stars 1950 Where the Sidewalk Ends   Otto Preminger
  6 Stars 1960 Murder, Inc.   Burt Balaban
  6 Stars 1991 Swoon   Tom Kalin
  6 Stars 1974 The Sugarland Express   Steven Spielberg
  6 Stars 1992 Light Sleeper   Paul Schrader
  6 Stars 1991 Bugsy   Barry Levinson
  5 Stars 1999 True Crime   Clint Eastwood
  5 Stars 1989 Violent Cop   Beat Takeshi Kitano
  5 Stars 1998 The Last Don II   Graeme Clifford
  5 Stars 1988 As Tears Go By   Wong Kar-Wai
    5 Stars 1935 Crime and Punishment   Josef von Sternberg
  5 Stars 1997 Vor   Pavel Chukhrai
  5 Stars 1996 American Buffalo   Michael Corrente
    5 Stars 1990 Docteur Petiot   Christian de Chalonge
  5 Stars 1995 Killer: A Journal of Murder   Tim Metcalfe
  5 Stars 1995 Shanghai Triad   Zhang Yimou
  5 Stars 1995 L'Appat   Bertrand Tavernier
    5 Stars 1958 Crime et Châtiment   Georges Lampin
    5 Stars 1981 The Gangster Chronicles: An American Story   Richard Sarafian
  5 Stars 1956 Yield to the Night   J. Lee Thompson
  5 Stars 1972 The Valachi Papers   Terence Young
  5 Stars 1973 Deux Hommes Dans La Ville   José Giovanni
    5 Stars 1948 I Walk Alone   Byron Haskin
  5 Stars 1956 The Wrong Man   Alfred Hitchcock
  5 Stars 1973 Les Noces Rouges   Claude Chabrol
  5 Stars 1976 The Virginia Hill Story   Joel Schumacher
  5 Stars 1991 New Jack City   Mario Van Peebles
  5 Stars 1991 Men of Respect   William Reilly
  5 Stars 1974 Lucky Luciano   Francesco Rosi
  5 Stars 1969 The Honeymoon Killers   Leonard Kastle
  5 Stars 1971 The Grissom Gang   Robert Aldrich
    5 Stars 1948 The Dark Past   Rudolph Maté
    5 Stars 1959 Al Capone   Richard Wilson
    4 Stars 1997 This World, Then the Fireworks   Michael Oblowitz
  4 Stars 1996 Normal Life   John McNaughton
 
 
 
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