Crime

Explore tales of heists, detectives, and the criminal underworld. Gritty, suspenseful, and full of moral twists — crime cinema at its most gripping.

Whistle Stop (1946) Léonide Moguy, George Raft, Ava Gardner, Victor McLaglen, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

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Beautiful Mary returns to her small hometown after many years from Chicago wearing a mink coat and carrying an expensive cigarette case. Her arrival causes long standing enmities to surface between two of her old boyfriends, Kenny Veech, a loafing gambler, and debonair Lew Lentz, owner of a local nightclub. Their deep-seated animosity repeatedly results in antagonism and fights as they compete for Mary’s affections. Kenny’s friend Gitlo, a bartender in Lentz’ club, enlists Kenny in an aborted plan to rob Lentz of $15,000 in profits from sponsoring a local carnival. Lentz retaliates by framing both men for murder.
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Vrazda po nasem / Murder Czech Style (1967) Jirí Weiss, Rudolf Hrusínský, Kveta Fialová, Václav Voska, Comedy, Crime

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The protagonist (Rudolf Hrusinsky) is a dull, fat, shy government clerk indulging in voyuerism and ego fantasies. In love with another clerk (Kveta Fiolova), he is urged on in his pursuit by a commiserate executive. The story is told in a flashback sequence as the cuckolded Hrusinsky attempts suicide by gassing himself in his bathtub. The “Murder” of the title is not a murder as such, rather the murder that Hrusinsky remembers planning upon discovering his wife’s unfaithfulness with his supposed friend and advisor. Both plots failing in his mind, he loses himself in fantastic reveries of his funeral and of hypocritical mourners. ‘ Deciding (perhaps) that this is not the way out either, he gives up the attempt and imagines a life of reconciliation and eventual affluence.
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Supermarkt (1974) Roland Klick, Charly Wierczejewski, Eva Mattes, Michael Degen, Action, Crime, Drama

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18-year old Willi is living on the street – there are no goals in his life. There, he meets several people, helping but also cheating him. When he finally meets Monica, he realizes that there are people out there whose lives are even more desperate than his. So he’s trying to help her (and him) by planning a great robbery on a supermarket’s money transporter.
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Underworld Beauty (1958) Seijun Suzuki, Michitarô Mizushima, Mari Shiraki, Shinsuke Ashida, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

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The moment he’s released from prison, the honorable gangster Miyamoto recovers the stolen diamonds he had stashed before getting pinched. When he returns to his haunt to make good by friend who took a bullet for him, he is diverted by the greedy boss Oyane and his insatiable taste for Miyamoto’s precious stones. Replete with film noir style, “Underworld Beauty” is one of Suzuki’s best nods to the American gangster genre.
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