Act of Violence (1949), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Out of the Past (1947), Sin City (2005), The Big Heat (1953), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Narrow Margin (1952), A Bittersweet Life (2005) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Hard-boiled movies.
Storyline: A former prisoner of war, Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is hailed as a hero in his California town. However, Frank actually aided his Nazi captors, and he closely guards this secret. Frank's shameful past comes back to visit him when fellow survivor Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan) emerges, intent on making the turncoat pay for his betrayal. As Joe closes in on Frank, the traitor goes into hiding, abandoning his wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), who has no clue about her husband's wartime transgressions.
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, thriller, drama, mystery, revenge, moral dilemma ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: J.J. Hunsecker, the most powerful newspaper columnist in New York, is determined to prevent his sister from marrying Steve Dallas, a jazz musician. He therefore covertly employs Sidney Falco, a sleazy and unscrupulous press agent, to break up the affair by any means possible.
Plot Keywords: film noir, drama, crime, media, power, corruption, new york ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Jeff Bailey, small-town gas pumper, has his mysterious past catch up with him one day when he's ordered to meet with gambler Whit Sterling. En route to the meeting, he tells girlfriend Ann his story. Flashback: Once, Jeff was a private eye hired by Sterling to find his mistress Kathie who shot Whit and absconded with $40,000. He traces her to Acapulco...where the delectable Kathie makes Jeff forget all about Sterling... Back in the present, Whit's new job for Jeff is clearly a trap, but Jeff's precautions only leave him more tightly enmeshed...
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, mystery, romance, betrayal, fate, revenge ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Four tales of crime adapted from Frank Miller's popular comics, focusing around a muscular brute who's looking for the person responsible for the death of his beloved Goldie, a man fed up with Sin City's corrupt law enforcement who takes the law into his own hands after a horrible mistake, a cop who risks his life to protect a girl from a deformed pedophile, and a hitman looking to make a little cash.
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, violence, comic book adaptation, stylized, dark, detective ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Dave Bannion is an upright cop on the trail of a vicious gang he suspects holds power over the police force. Bannion is tipped off after a colleague's suicide and his fellow officers' suspicious silence lead him to believe that they are on the gangsters' payroll. When a bomb meant for him kills his wife instead, Bannion becomes a furious force of vengeance and justice, aided along the way by the gangster's spurned girlfriend Debby. As Bannion and Debby fall further and further into the Gangland's insidious and brutal trap, they must use any means necessary (including murder) to get to the truth.
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, mystery, thriller, police, corruption, revenge ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When the intelligent criminal Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider is released from prison, he seeks a fifty thousand-dollar investment from the bookmaker Cobby to recruit a small gang of specialists for a million-dollar heist of jewels from a jewelry. Doc is introduced to the lawyer Alonzo D. Emmerich that offers to finance the whole operation and buy the gems immediately after the burglary. Doc hires the safecracker Louis Ciavelli, the driver Gus Minissi and the gunman Dix Handley to the heist. His plan works perfectly but bad luck and betrayals compromise the steps after the heist and the gangsters need to flee from the police.
Plot Keywords: crime, film noir, heist, suspense, thriller, gangster, conspiracy ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When a mobster's widow decides to testify and provide names of others involved in evil deeds, she goes undercover to avoid being killed. Onboard a train going cross-country, she's being escorted in order to testify. Cop Walter Brown and his partner are assigned the task, but the mob are on their trail, attempting to make sure she never reaches her destination.—Col Needham <col@imdb.com>
Plot Keywords: film noir, thriller, crime, suspense, 1950s, classic, b-movie ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Things go wrong for a high ranking mobster when he doesn't proceed by his boss's orders.
Plot Keywords: action, crime, film noir, revenge, gangster, violence, korean cinema ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A petty thief posing as an actor is brought to Los Angeles for an unlikely audition and finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation along with his high school dream girl and a detective who's been training him for his upcoming role...
Plot Keywords: black comedy, crime, mystery, action, detective, satire, los angeles ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: 1949, Santa Rosa, California. A laconic, chain-smoking barber with fallen arches tells a story of a man trying to escape a humdrum life. It's a tale of suspected adultery, blackmail, foul play, death, Sacramento city slickers, racial slurs, invented war heroics, shaved legs, a gamine piano player, aliens, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Ed Crane cuts hair in his in-law's shop; his wife drinks and may be having an affair with her boss, Big Dave, who has $10,000 to invest in a second department store. Ed gets wind of a chance to make money in dry cleaning. Blackmail and investment are his opportunity to be more than a man no one notices. Settle in the chair and listen.
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, drama, mystery, usa, betrayal, murder ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Determined Treasury Department investigator Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) goes after a ruthless mobster known as The Big Fellow. When a key informant is murdered, Warren pursues the gangster on charges of tax evasion. But, with a slick mob lawyer hampering him at every turn, and threats being lobbed toward Warren's wife (Nina Foch), the lawman's chances of achieving a conviction are slim to none. His only hope is that one syndicate bookkeeper will have the courage to turn state's evidence.
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, drama, mystery, detective, undercover, police ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Hit man Philip Raven, who's kind to children and cats, kills a blackmailer and is paid off by traitor Willard Gates in "hot" money. Meanwhile, pert entertainer Ellen Graham, girlfriend of police Lieut. Crane (who's after Raven) is enlisted by a Senate committee to help investigate Gates. Raven, seeking Gates for revenge, meets Ellen on the train; their relationship gradually evolves from that of killer and potential victim to an uneasy alliance against a common enemy.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, thriller, mystery, revenge, betrayal, espionage ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Hard, withdrawn city cop Jim Wilson roughs up one too many suspects and is sent upstate to help investigate the murder of a young girl in the winter countryside. There he meets Mary Malden, whom he finds attractive and independent. However, Mary's brother is chief suspect in the killing. And Mary herself is blind.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, drama, mystery, thriller, police, violence ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Rocky Mulloy, back in town after serving 5 years of a life sentence for armed robbery, hopes to clear his friend Danny Morgan who's still in prison for the same crime. It won't be easy. Even the witness who cleared Rocky thinks he's guilty; Danny's glamorous wife Nancy, living in a sleazy trailer court, seems lukewarm about getting Danny back; cynical cop Gus Cobb just wants to stir things up in hopes that the missing "hot" $100,000 will surface. Plenty of tough talk, night scenes, deceptive dames and double crosses in this typical film noir.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, drama, thriller, mystery, detective, revenge ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Ex-con Moose (Jack O'Halloran) hires private eye Phillip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) to find his long-lost girlfriend, Velma, a lounge singer. The lounge owner's wife says she's dead, but Marlowe remains skeptical. Meanwhile, Marlowe also goes on a routine ransom exchange for a necklace and gets knocked out and framed for murder. He eventually finds the necklace's owner, blonde bombshell Helen Grayle (Charlotte Rampling) but, more importantly, evidence that the two cases are connected.
Plot Keywords: film noir, detective, crime, murder, mystery, los angeles, 1940s ...
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