Best Film-Noir Movies

When a car bomb explodes on the American side of the U.S./Mexico border, Mexican drug enforcement agent Miguel Vargas begins his investigation, along with American police captain Hank Quinlan. When Vargas begins to suspect that Quinlan and his shady partner, Menzies, are planting evidence to frame an innocent man, his investigations into their possible corruption quickly put himself and his new bride, Susie, in jeopardy.

New York City newspaper writer J.J. Hunsecker holds considerable sway over public opinion with his Broadway column, but one thing that he can\'t control is his younger sister, Susan, who is in a relationship with aspiring jazz guitarist Steve Dallas. Hunsecker strongly disproves of the romance and recruits publicist Sidney Falco to find a way to split the couple, no matter how ruthless the method.

In Paris, Bob Montagne is practically synonymous with gambling -- and winning. He is kind, classy and well-liked by virtually everyone in town, including police inspector Ledru. However, when Bob's luck turns sour, he begins to lose friends and makes the most desperate gamble of his life: to rob the Deauville casino during Grand Prix weekend, when the vaults are full. Unfortunately, Bob soon learns that the game is rigged and the cops are on to him.

Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and marries his fiancee, Fay. But when George tells his restless wife, Sherry, about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.

Out of prison after a five-year stretch, jewel thief Tony turns down a quick job his friend Jo offers him, until he discovers that his old girlfriend Mado has become the lover of local gangster Pierre Grutter during Tony\'s absence. Expanding a minor smash-and-grab into a full-scale jewel heist, Tony and his crew appear to get away clean, but their actions after the job is completed threaten the lives of everyone involved.

In the Deep South, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.

One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.

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 Debbie. As Bannion and Debbie 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.

A pickpocket unwittingly lifts a message destined for enemy agents and becomes a target for a Communist spy ring.

A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's widow on a tense train ride.

Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod (Douglas), leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city\'s lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.

A frustrated former big-city journalist now stuck working for an Albuquerque newspaper exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career, but the situation quickly escalates into an out-of-control media circus.

A psychotic socialite confronts a pro tennis star with a theory on how two complete strangers can get away with murder...a theory that he plans to implement.

A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.

A police detective\'s violent nature keeps him from being a good cop.

An aspiring actress begins to suspect that her temperamental boyfriend is a murderer.

Recently paroled from prison, legendary burglar \"Doc\" Riedenschneider, with funding from Alonzo Emmerich, a crooked lawyer, gathers a small group of veteran criminals together in the Midwest for a big jewel heist.

A small-time grifter and nightclub tout takes advantage of some fortuitous circumstances and tries to become a big-time player as a wrestling promoter.

Bart Tare is an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns, he meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Starr and goes to work at a carnival. After upsetting the carnival owner who lusts after Starr, they both get fired. Soon, on Starr\'s behest, they embark on a crime spree for cash. Subjects of a manhunt, they are tracked by police in the hills Tare enjoyed as a boy.

A psychopathic criminal (Cagney) with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and then leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. After the heist, events take a crazy turn.

Set in postwar Vienna, Austria, \"The Third Man\" stars Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, who arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to find him dead. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a \"third man\" present at the time of Harry\'s death, running into interference from British officer Maj. Calloway and falling head-over-heels for Harry\'s grief-stricken lover, Anna.

Nick Garcos comes back from his tour of duty in World War II planning to settle down with his girlfriend, Polly Faber. He learns, however, that his father was recently beaten and burglarized by mob-connected trucker Mike Figlia, and Nick resolves to get even. He partners with prostitute Rica, and together they go after Mike, all the while getting pulled further into the local crime underworld.

Stoker Thompson is a 35-year-old has-been boxer. His once-promising fighting career has come crashing to the end. Tiny, Stoker's manager, is sure he will continue to lose fights, so he takes money for a "dive" from a mobster, but is so sure that Thompson will lose that he doesn't tell the boxer about the set-up. At the beginning of the last round of the vicious boxing match he learns of the fix.

A hurricane swells outside, but it\'s nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up - and holds at gunpoint hotel owner James Temple, his widowed daughter-in-law Nora, and ex-GI Frank McCloud.

Stroud, a crime magazine\'s crusading editor has to post-pone a vacation with his wife, again, when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss Janoth to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence (albeit wrong) that he is the killer.

The Naked City portrays the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives, finding the girl\'s killer.

A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, CA. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. But Jeff has a secret past, and when a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Jeff is forced to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.

Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.

The movie follows the rise and fall of a con man — a story that begins and ends at a seedy travelling carnival. Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power) joins the carnival, working with \"Mademoiselle Zeena\" (Joan Blondell) and her alcoholic husband, Pete (Ian Keith).

Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?

Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called \"the Swede\". When the killers find the Swede, he\'s expecting them and doesn\'t put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede\'s past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.

Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.

In order to help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. As they begin to fall for one another, Alicia is instructed to win the affections of Alexander Sebastian, a Nazi hiding out in Brazil. When Sebastian becomes serious about his relationship with Alicia, the stakes get higher, and Devlin must watch her slip further undercover.

Just arrived in Argentina, small-time crooked gambler Johnny Farrell is saved from a gunman by sinister Ballin Mundson, who later makes Johnny his right-hand man. But their friendship based on mutual lack of scruples is strained when Mundson returns from a trip with a wife: the supremely desirable Gilda, whom Johnny once knew and learned to hate. The relationship of Johnny and Gilda, a battlefield of warring emotions, becomes even more bizarre after Mundson disappears...

When Dr. Anthony Edwardes arrives at a Vermont mental hospital to replace the outgoing hospital director, Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychoanalyst, discovers Edwardes is actually an impostor. The man confesses that the real Dr. Edwardes is dead and fears he may have killed him, but cannot recall anything. Dr. Peterson, however is convinced his impostor is innocent of the man\'s murder, and joins him on a quest to unravel his amnesia through psychoanalysis.

A man in mid-life crisis befriends a young woman after rescuing her from an attack. She believes he is rich and her boyfriend persuades her to con him out of his fortune.

A young novelist, Richard Harland, meets beautiful Ellen Berent on a train where they fall in love and are soon married. When tragedies take first his handicapped young brother, then his unborn son from him, Harland gradually realises that his wife\'s insane jealousy may be the cause of the tragedies in his life. Yet another shock awaits them all, as Ellen\'s emotions become uncontrollable.

After her unfaithful husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce proves she can become independent and successful. However winning the approval of her spoiled daughter proves a greater challenge.

Detective Philip Marlowe is hired by hulking Moose Malloy to locate his old girlfriend that he lost track of while serving time in prison. With each lead he follows, Marlowe encounters lies, larceny, perjury, theft and a beautiful femme fatale. Based on Raymond Chandler\'s novel \"Farewell My Lovely\", which was also the film\'s title in the United Kingdom.

A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he\'s investigating.

A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.

A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of distinctly Californian settings, the partners in crime plan the perfect murder to collect the insurance, which pays double if the death is accidental.

A bored teen living in Santa Rosa, California, Charlotte \"Charlie\" Newton, is frustrated because nothing seems to be happening in her life and that of her family. Then, she receives wonderful news: her uncle (for whom she was named), Charlie Oakley, is arriving for a visit. But Uncle Charlie may not be the man he seems to be.

Sadistic killer-for-hire Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.

A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.

After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.

In New York, the boys Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly are best friends and small time thieves. After a robbery, Rocky is arrested and sent to a reformatory school, where he begins his criminal career. Jerry escapes and later becomes a priest. After three years in prison, Rocky is released and demands the return of $100,000 deposited with his Solicitor - prior to his jail term.

A murderous thug shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.