The 10 greatest detective movies ever made
Some genres are designed to stand the test of time, and while the western eventually faded out of favour and the superhero bubble is going to burst eventually, the detective movie isn’t going anywhere.
Whether it’s a classic noir, a hard-boiled thriller, an all-guns-blazing actioner, a whodunit, or a laugh-out-loud comedy, the concept of an officer or investigator using their smarts, wits, and fists to solve a mystery is about as timeless as they come.
As a result, cinema has thrown up countless classics that occupy that very narrative space, with many legends on either side of the camera playing their own part. Sleuths and smoky rooms are the order of the day, and excellence is the end result.
In the interest of fairness, the best detective films by their definition need to feature at least one central character who either is or was a member of law enforcement or a private eye of some kind at one stage or another so anything that doesn’t fit the bill doesn’t make the cut, not that classics are in short supply.
The 10 best detective movies:
10. L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)
If it wasn’t for James Cameron and Titanic, then Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential would have been in with a very good shot at winning the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’, with the filmmaker’s love letter to classic noir deftly blending a classical story with modern style and dynamism.
Guy Pearce’s detective is out to avenge his father’s murder, while Russell Crowe’s Bud White heads up an investigation of his own, before the two converge among the twists, turns, deceits, deaths, and double-crossings to define the dark side of Los Angeles.
The atmosphere is ripped right from the genre’s heyday, with a memorable cast of supporting characters and expertly-paced narrative creating an intoxicating, seductive, and entrancing crime story that wouldn’t have been out of place had it released in the 1940s.
9. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
Individually or collectively, Robert Altman and Elliott Gould have never been cooler than they were in The Long Goodbye, a satire wrapped in a literary adaptation wrapped in a mystery that’s wrapped in another mystery on top of that.
Tasked by his buddy to give him a ride to Mexico, the charismatic Philip Marlowe ends up being questioned over the death of his friend’s wife. Taking on a new case, the two worlds come ever closer to colliding, with plenty of comedy to be found along the way as The Long Goodbye repeatedly nods to its own status and that of the detective film at large.
Altman is constantly subverting and undermining the tropes of the cinematic sleuth, but still respects the material more than enough to tell a superior story. More influential than most of its kind, Gould’s investigation helped set the stage for side-splitting laughs and sleuths to become synonymous with each other on the big screen.
8. Seven (David Fincher, 1995)
Dark, grimy, grubby, and disturbing, it’s easy to see why David Fincher distanced himself from Alien 3 so much that he views Seven as his genuine directorial debut.
The atmosphere is so thick there’s not a knife on the planet able to cut it, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman being pushed to the limit by a biblically-inclined serial killer with a perfectionist streak who always remains one step ahead.
That’s still the case even when he turns himself in, with Seven creating an uneasy feeling in the pit of the stomach that carries right through to its haunting, unforgettable final scene.
7. The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)
Part comedy, part mystery, and all classic, The Thin Man threads the tonal needle between laughs and thrills with effortless ease, building a head of steam towards a phenomenal final scene where the cards are well and truly laid on the table.
A retired detective with a fondness for a drink picks up the trail of a missing investor, but despite his reluctance to abandon a nice holiday in New York City, his wife’s craving for adventure leads them down multiple blind alleys until the truth is revealed.
William Powell and Myrna Loy bounce of each other effortlessly throughout, with their bickering banter powering the story as it progresses towards the grandstanding dinner party where everyone is outed as a suspect, but only Powell’s Nick knows which one.
6. Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)
Inspired by a true story but a wholly original work, Bong Joon-ho seizes upon the mundanities of investigative work to shine new light on his two protagonists as they find themselves being drawn even deeper down the rabbit hole.
Initially tasked to a double murder, Song Kang-ho and Kim Roi-ha’s detectives soon discover they’re on the case of South Korea’s first-ever serial killer, and trying to root out the culprit initially looks to be an obstacle the two bumbling detectives are woefully ill-equipped for.
As tends to be the case in all of his work, Joon-ho casts a withering glance at the country’s corridors of power and the way a broken system regularly prevent its inhabitants from giving the best of themselves, all while keeping viewers perched on the edge of their seats in anticipation of what comes next.
5. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Opening with a bang, James Stewart‘s Scottie Ferguson retires from his position as a detective at the end of the opening scene, when a police colleague falling to their death following roof chase causes him to suffer the titular affliction.
This being Alfred Hitchcock, it isn’t long before he’s drawn back into the fray against his better judgment. The mystery at Vertigo‘s core is an entrancing one, but the relationship between Stewart and Kim Novak’s Judy Barton is what really powers the film towards classic status.
Its themes have been picked apart and endlessly dissected for almost 70 years, but at the end of the day, Vertigo thrives on being one of the most immaculately-constructed mystery thrillers ever made, and one of cinema’s all-time great detective films to boot.
4. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
Pairing Orson Welles with Charlton Heston was always going to lead to fireworks, with Touch of Evil pitting an irresistible force against an immovable object, before making them work side-by-side to solve the overarching mystery.
An explosion on the border between the United States and Mexico finds Welles’ bigoted police captain working together with Heston’s agent on the opposite side, the distrust between them is palpable at first. As it turns out, there’s a very good reason for it.
With stunning cinematography, cutting-edge editing, and towering performances, even if Touch of Evil was crap, it would be nice to look at. Fortunately, the incendiary tale of corruption and injustice layered with not-so-casual racism on the part of Welles’ character makes it a top-tier detective flick.
3. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
With a director, screenwriter, and leading man firing on all cylinders, Chinatown was instantly greeted as not just one of the best movies of the 1970s, but one of the greatest ever made.
Jack Nicholson gets a whole lot more than he bargained for when private eye Jake Gittes begins his investigation in what for all intents and purposes seems to be a standard case of infidelity. Unfortunately for him, the repercussions of what he discovers are as wide-ranging as they are earth-shattering.
A classic noir in spirit but ‘New Hollywood’ to its very bones, Chinatown is at times a deeply cynical and unpleasant film, but it’s also an inarguable masterpiece.
2. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Very much a film told in two parts, Akira Kurosawa starts off with a contained character-driven drama, before High and Low evolves into a riveting procedural that’s always ready to play its next card without coming close to showing the full hand.
Toshiro Mifune masterfully anchors the first half as Kingo Gondo, the wealthy industrialist who faces the internal struggle and turmoil of wrestling over the decision of whether or not he should fork out the ransom fee after kidnappers mistakenly snatch his driver’s son thinking it’s his.
Once he makes his decision, High and Low shifts its focus to the detectives tasked bring the kidnapper to justice. Kurosawa made so many seminal films that it might not even be among his very best, but that says a lot more about him than it does the procedural drama, because rarely has it been done better in cinema history.
1. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
There were detective movies before The Maltese Falcon, and there were detective movies after The Maltese Falcon, with John Huston and Humphrey Bogart creating a masterwork that’s as influential as is iconic.
Every gumshoe to hit the screen owes at least a small debt of gratitude to Sam Spade, the private investigator who ends up getting entangled in a conspiracy of murder and mayhem, which proved so alluring that the unexplained nature of the titular MacGuffin doesn’t even matter.
The shadow cast over noir by The Maltese Falcon looms larger and stretches further than any other, and it’s fully deserving of its status as the greatest detective film ever made.
