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Nobody wears a fedora in these,which was the usual for earlier noir films. Now, neo-noir takes the old crime-movie mood, the rain, the bad decisions, the feeling that somebody has already lost, and drops it into the present day, where people have cell phones, cameras are everywhere, and the hero could just as easily be a stringer chasing car crashes as a detective in a trench coat.
The stories are all different, but the feeling is definitely the same. You can tell early on that it won’t end well for most of the people involved. These are the six I think do it best from the last fifteen years. From a loud, funny buddy mystery to a Batman movie that looks like an actual detective story.
6
‘The Nice Guys’ (2016)
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Image via Warner Bros.</figure>
It’s 1977 in Los Angeles, and Holland March (Ryan Gosling), a drunk, barely competent private investigator, ends up working with Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), a guy who breaks people’s arms for a living. They get tangled up in the search for a missing girl, Amelia, and the trail leads through the porn industry and the auto business. March’s daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), tags along and ends up smarter than both of them. Shane Black, who wrote Lethal Weapon, directed The Nice Guys.
Gosling plays March as a coward with a surprising talent for slapstick, and he falls off a balcony, screams like a kid, and finds a dead body in a way that never gets old. Crowe is the straight man, and the two of them are very good together. It didn’t make much money, which is a shame, because the jokes land and the mystery actually holds up.
5
‘Nightcrawler’ (2014)
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Image via Open Road Films</figure>
Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a petty thief in Los Angeles who discovers he can make money filming car crashes and crime scenes and selling the footage to local news. He hires a desperate assistant, Rick (Riz Ahmed), and builds a relationship with a news director, Nina (Rene Russo), who wants the bloodiest footage she can get. Dan Gilroy made his directing debut with Nightcrawler, and Russo, his real-life wife, plays Nina.
Gyllenhaal lost around twenty pounds for the part, and he looks hollow and hungry, with eyes that never blink enough. Lou talks in a strange, corporate-speak that sounds like a motivational book, and the more he talks, the more frightening he gets. He crosses lines nobody else would, and there’s no moment where he gets punished for it. It’s a dark joke about local news, and it still feels sharp.
Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours.
Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from
the encounter.
Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you
completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the
conversation is.
- Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He
never raises his voice, because he has never needed to. - You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve
is exactly the door he would knock on. - The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence.
It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person. - He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.
Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is
after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.
- The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence
against him. It is the entire reason he showed up. - He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool
you would normally reach for. - His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend
the rest of your life proving him wrong. - He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.
Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work
out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.
- Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from:
a mind the equal of the hero’s, pointed the wrong way. - You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he
has already built the room. - This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs
the game to be worth playing. - It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.
Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that
is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.
- Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the
answer was decided long before you opened your mouth. - You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no
interest in how capable you are. - No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences
quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work. - Call it. He will wait.
4
‘Blue Ruin’ (2013)
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Image via RADiUS-TWC</figure>
Dwight (Macon Blair) is a drifter living out of a rusty car on the Delaware coast until he hears that the man who killed his parents is getting out of prison. He drives to Virginia to take revenge, and he’s terrible at it. He leaves his keys behind, gets hurt, and starts a feud with the man’s family that spirals out of control. Sam (Amy Hargreaves), his sister, is pulled into it all. Jeremy Saulnier wrote and directed Blue Ruin.
Saulnier raised some of the money on Kickstarter, and Blair, a childhood friend of his, plays Dwight as a quiet, scared man who isn’t built for violence. The movie premiered at Cannes and won a critics’ prize there. Revenge stories usually make killing look cool, and this one shows how clumsy and painful it would be in real life.
3
‘You Were Never Really Here’ (2017)
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Image via Amazon Studios</figure>
Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a hired fixer who rescues kidnapped girls, usually with a hammer, and he’s barely holding himself together. When a senator’s daughter, Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), goes missing, Joe takes the job and finds a conspiracy that reaches far above him. He also takes care of his elderly mother at home, and those scenes are among the movie’s most tender. Lynne Ramsay directed You Were Never Really Here from a short novel by Jonathan Ames.
It runs only about 89 minutes, and she cuts most of the violence out of frame, so you see the aftermath more than the act. Phoenix puts on weight and he plays Joe with constant pain. He won Best Actor at Cannes, and Ramsay shared the Best Screenplay prize. Jonny Greenwood‘s score hums and screeches in all the right places.
2
‘Drive’ (2011)
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Image via FilmDistrict</figure>
A nameless Hollywood stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) also works as a getaway driver for hire, and he falls for his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan). When her husband gets out of prison owing money to dangerous people, the Driver steps in to help, and a robbery goes wrong. Shannon (Bryan Cranston), his boss, tries to look out for him. Nicolas Winding Refn directed Drive, and he won Best Director at Cannes for it.
Albert Brooks, known for comedy, plays the gangster Bernie Rose against type, and he’s terrifying in a calm, polite way. The Driver barely speaks, and Gosling does a lot with silence and a toothpick. The silver scorpion jacket became famous, and so did the synth soundtrack, especially “Nightcall” and “A Real Hero.” The elevator scene still leaves people breathless.
1
‘The Batman’ (2022)
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Image via Warner Bros.</figure>
Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) is only in his second year as Batman, still a rumor to most of Gotham, when the Riddler (Paul Dano) starts killing city officials and leaving him cryptic clues. Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz) helps him follow the trail, and the Penguin (Colin Farrell), buried under prosthetics, runs a nightclub with ties to the mob. Jeffrey Wright plays Gordon, and Andy Serkis plays Alfred, two of the most versatile actors.
Matt Reeves, the director of the film, has said he drew from Chinatown and Se7en, and wrote parts of the script listening to Nirvana, which is why “Something in the Way” plays early in the movie. Greig Fraser shot it in rain and shadow, and Michael Giacchino’s score has a heavy four-note theme that sticks. So, all in all this is only the Batman movie closest to real noir.
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