Ten Best Detective Movies Ever Made
Nov 04 '09
The Bottom Line 10 best detective movies ever featuring brilliant forensic minds solving tough crimes. These are the 10 top detective films of all time!
Finding the best and greatest detective movies is a bit like solving a mystery yourself. You need the same powers of observation and broad background knowledge that a great detective needs, and you need to be able to reach logical conclusions through intellect and deduction. A great detective movie isn't the same as a great cop movie, it isn't the same as a crime movie --- nor is it the same as a great mystery movie --- though detectives can be cops and they do solve mysteries, normally involving crimes.
In any great detective movie there are elements of crime films, cop films, gangster films, suspense films, film noir, thrillers, and action/adventure films --- but not all films in those genres are detective films (let alone "great" detective films).
What makes for a great detective movie is a focus on character: a great detective movie is as much about the detective himself (or herself) as it is about solving the "whoddunit". A memorable detective character must have amazing logical skills and phenomenal knowledge about a wide range of subjects. We love Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Lincoln Rhyme because of their finely tuned logical minds that recall details that most viewers overlook and they tie these details together to form logical deductions to answer the all-important questions, "whodunnit?" A great detective must also be smart enough to know when politics dictate discretion rather than disclosure.
Great detective movies feature clever, smart detectives who apply intellect and logic to solve a puzzle. The puzzle can be a murder, a theft, or even a missing person --- the crime is less important than the methodical logic and analysis that goes into figuring out what happened. Bringing a perpetrator to justice is not a necessary element of the detective movie --- it is enough that the detective satisfy himself that the puzzle is solved.
But enough chatter, let's dim the lights and roll the movies...
*************** TOP 10 GREATEST DETECTIVE MOVIES OF ALL TIME ***************
Call them private eyes, hard-boiled dicks, gumshoes, coppers, investigators or inspectors....just call 'em when you have a mind-boggling mystery to solve. These are my ten favorite detective movies of all time. Hope you like 'em too! As always, I count them UP!
1. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Detective: Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade
Who was the more famous hard-boiled private eye? Chandler's Marlowe or Dashielle Hammet's Sam Spade? They're both great, and in the end, does it even really matter since everybody whose ever watched AMC or TMC views Humphrey Bogart as the ultimate private dick. This movie has always been one of my favorite Bogart flicks, not just because I unashamedly love everything Bogart ever did, but because the movie also features other actors who remind me of Casablanca --- namely Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. By the way? Even though people seem to get bumped off whereever the black bird roosts, there's remarkably little real violence or blood to be seen. And what a delightfully ironic ending...
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2. Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
Detective: Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle's classic pipe-smoking genteel detective, Sherlock Holmes, is one of the world's best-known detectives. Together with his trusty confidant, Dr. Watson, Holmes never ceases to amaze audiences with his dizzying intellect. More than 200 Sherlock Holmes films have been made with dozens upon dozens of actors portraying the sleuth of 221-B Baker Street. Of all the Sherlock Holmes movies that have been made, I think Hound of the Baskervilles stands head and shoulders above the pack. Basil Rathbone is a sublime Sherlock Holmes!
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3. Chinatown (1972)
Detective: Jack Nicholson as J.J. Gittes
Brilliantly complex noir-style detective movie that has Jack Nicholson (as JJ Gittes), on the trail of a supposedly philandering water exec. When Mr. Water turns up dead, things heat up for Gittes. The movie captures the dark intrigue of classic 1930s and 1940s noir films, and it's a high stakes whoddunit caper involving water rights and the politics of greed that goes along with them. The plot has more twists than a good corkscrew, along with a surprise or two. Aside for being a great vehicle to showcase Nicholson's prodigous acting talent, this movie is often considered one of Roman Polanski's defining works.
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4. The Big Sleep (1946)
Detective: Humphrey Bogard as Philip Marlowe
Raymond Chandler was a master of the hard-boiled detective genre, and there's few detectives more hard-boiled than Philip Marlowe. Humphrey Bogart brought Marlowe to life on the silver screen, but this movie stands out not because of the underlying mystery story, but because of its style, sass, and steam --- as in the chemistry between Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The Bogey-Bacall chemistry that movie hounds first loved in To Have and Have Not, is one that sizzles into an inferno in this classic film noir. I love the blatant sluttiness of Carmen as well as the contrasting and slightly more restrained sensuality of Vivian. The plot is a wild rollercoaster that twists at every turn.
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5. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Detective: Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs
I love this movie because it's not just a great detective movie, but it's also a commentary on race relations as black Philadelphia veteran detective Tibbs (Poitier) is immediately suspected of a local murder in a rural Mississippi town. When the local cops discover his true identity, the sheriff enlists Tibbs' famous deductive skills to help find the real perpetrator. Brilliant motion picture that won five Oscars when it came out! The movie has a grungey realism of deep south back country with tangible menace never far from Tibbs as white cracker southerners wear their distrust and disdain of blacks for all to see. Rod Steiger turns in an outstanding performance as Gillespie, the sheriff who recognizes that working with Tibbs is the way he'll achieve success...even though he has to walk a fine line so that the crackers he has to live with won't see him as coddling a black man. Deep south racial tension amid the mystery....brilliant!
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6. The Bone Collector (1999)
Detective: Denzel Washington as Lincoln Rhyme
A harrowing accident might take his mobility, but it can't take the dizzying intellect and vast knowledge stores that inspector Lincoln Rhyme keeps locked inside his head. He's the closest I've seen a modern detective film come to giving us a character with the deductive skills of Sherlock Holmes. When a serial killer taunts police and the public with subtle clues left at his crime scenes, Rhyme relies on his former colleagues for grunt work and on a very hot looking rookie cop (Angelina Jolie) to observe crime scenes as his eyes and ears.
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7. Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Detective: Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer
Mickey Spillane's classic private eye, Mike Hammer, has an eye for hot looking damsels in distress. Even when they turn out to be loonies who've bolted from the insane asylum. Violence ensues, and Hammer is the kind of detective who fights fire with firefights. Determined to find out who is behind his "car accident" and the death of his looney hottie, Hammer tracks a mysterious substance through the seedy underbelly of L.A. It's classic noir style that plays up the dark paranoia of America's cold war era.
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8. L.A. Confidential (1997)
Detective: Kevin Spacey as Jack Vincennes
Los Angeles is a seedy place full of graft, corruption, sleaze, and a blatant lack of moral turpitude. If you have any doubts, you haven't watched many detective movies. True to form, L.A. Confidential is a tangled web of Hollywood sleaze running full tilt into police corruption and political malfeasance. Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce are very different kinds of cops, but all have a role to play in investigating brutal murders that happen at the Night Owl. With beautiful women, porno and prostitution thrown into the volatile mix, how can the movie NOT be great? It is.
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9. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Detective: Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot
Classic Agatha Christie tale has her dapper Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, traveling across Europe on the posh Orient Express. Stopped by snow late at night, the passengers awake to discover that one of their number has been murdered --- stabbed a dozen times --- and the murder is most certainly another passenger since there are no tracks in the snow outside and all the train's doors were locked. Who could it be? What motive could possibly exist for someone to kill the businessman, Ratchett?
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10. Dial M for Murder (1954)
Detective: John Williams as Chief Inspector Hubbard
One of Alfred Hitchcock's many masterpieces of intrigue and suspense. Grace Kelly is picture perfect as the poised beauty ready for some extra-marital joy, while her ever-suave jilted husband (Ray Milland) blackmails a lackey into killing her. Alas, all does not go as planned, though murder is indeed committed. How will Chief Inspector Hubbard find the key to this puzzling murder caper? Occasionally this movie is shown at art cinema houses in a glorious 3-D version that understates its special effects.
*************** TOP 10 GREATEST DETECTIVE MOVIES OF ALL TIME ***************
There you have it! My ten favorite detective movies ever!
A few notable mentions: I'd have loved to have included at least one Charlie Chan movie, since these were a staple of Saturday matinee TV when I was a kid, but I can't think of one that stands far above the pack and most are fairly average "pulp cinema" (if such a concept makes any sense). I liked 'em as entertainment, but none make my "top 10". I thought about The Thin Man too (after all, who can't love an intoxicated detective who solves mysteries with his hot looking wife and annoying little dog?) I should also mention that Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is a hilarious 1982-vintage spoof on the hard-boiled detective genre with clips from several of these films interspersed with Steve Martin's hilarious portrayal of private eye, Rigby Reardon.
I'm sure you can probably name a few more great movie detectives that I've overlooked. Bring 'em on! I always love to chat movies!
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