“War is a criminal business; I fight it with criminals.” From Emil Jannings winning the first every best actor Oscar in 1928 for The Last Command through to the recent success of Dunkirk, war pictures have maintained their currency. Of course, their popularity has ebbed and flowed...

The first time Rose spies the handsome Tommy Swann in It Always Rains on Sunday she’s smitten. She’s working the bar in an East End London boozer when the saloon doors open and Tommy sweeps in wearing a double-breasted suit, a hat tilted just so and a cigarette dangling from his...

For a director best known for his wide vistas and endless horizons shooting a film like Hobson’s Choice might seem like a limiting project for David Lean. Adapted from the 1915 play and set in the mercantile Lancashire of the last century we barely stray beyond the town high street and...

If you love visual comedy, you gotta love Edgar Wright, one of the few filmmakers who is consistently finding humour through framing, camera movement, editing, goofy sound effects and music. Compelling appreciation of the moving image and its possibilities by Tony...

The joy of reading classic noir doesn’t usually come from the investigation itself, but rather uncovering the secrets and hypocrisies the PI’s client would rather stay hidden. How sweet it is to see Phillip Marlowe or the Continental Op turn on their employers, to end the...

It’s always something of a mystery when some vintage British crime pictures attain a hallowed status in the film pantheon where other, equally good movies, languish in obscurity. You’ll hear no argument from this quarter about the classic status of Get Carter or The Long Good...

In between making two of the more winsome Ealing Comedies Charles Crighton tried his hand at directing a genuine crime thriller and pulled it off magnificently. Hunted opens with a young lad, not more than six, desperately running from something or someone. His flight is so pell mell he...

Though British studio Hammer was best known for its sanguinary vampire films and gothic horrors, in the early ’60s it started to include psychological dramas in its production slate. The guiding force behind the best this output was one man: producer and writer Jimmy Sangster. True, he...

We are all used to seeing heist films that focus so intently on preparation that when the final execution of the crime comes along it almost seems like an afterthought. Ringo Lam‘s City on Fire is one example, Michael Mann‘s Heat is another while Noel Black‘s A Man, a Woman...

‘Planned?’ the incredulous victim asks our protagonist ‘You planned this?’ ‘Oh yes, weeks ago. It’s all part of my perfect murder.’ Well, introductory lines don’t get much better than that. It’s always a treat to see a well planned crime...