Noir almost always conjures images of a bygone era of hard-boiled detectives, femme fatales, and corrupt cops. It’s an era that only ever existed in movies and pulp novels, and in actuality only represents one portion of the noir genre. The classic noir period is generally set somewhere between 1940 and 1960. There were plenty of precursors throughout the ’30s and lots of influences from films like those from German Expressionism before that, but the period is still generally accepted. If you need easy demarcation using major films, from The Maltese Falcon to Touch of Evil should give you a good idea. Everything after this classic period is considered neo-noir.
Neo-noirs are movies that use the same traits, themes or aesthetic as classic noir. Some of the early examples could almost be indistinguishable from the classics, but as time has gone on, they’ve expanded the genre to all kinds of different dark corners. Some are modern, some are period pieces, others mix and match with other genres, such as science fiction, Western, or horror. Neo-noirs have been carrying on the traditions of the genre for decades, and that has continued well into the 21st century. In the last 25 years alone, there have been some great neo-noirs, and these ten are the greatest.
Rian Johnson‘s directorial debut Brick is one of the clearest examples of how neo-noirs have expanded the genre to some interesting places. The film features the same kind of hard-boiled dialogue you’d expect in a Dashiell Hammett novel and a twisty plot of drugs, betrayal, and a criminal underworld, except that it’s all recited and inhabited by teenagers. Make no mistake, it isn’t some gritty teen drama like Kids; it’s still just as heightened, approaching overwrought, but it’s all presented through high school archetypes.
Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is distressed after he gets a cryptic phone call from his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin). When she turns up dead, Brendan starts to investigate, and he’s quickly pulled into an underworld involving a drug kingpin and a gang war. The cast, for their part, play everything incredibly straight. Even in the few moments where the film is winking at its entire concept, the characters are never in on the joke. Brilliant but forgotten, Brick is very much a litmus test for noir fans who might consider themselves purists, but even if its concept seems too gimmicky to you, give it a chance, and you’re sure to be surprised by its dedication to the genre.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is the most underrated neo-noir from the 2000s, especially considering it was the final film directed by acclaimed director Sidney Lumet, who directed some of the greatest films of the 20th century, including Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and The Verdict. While this film isn’t quite on the same level as those masterpieces, it’s still an incredibly effective crime thriller that demonstrates why Lumet was such a force behind the camera. It’s the perfect black swan song for the director, and it features two captivating performances by Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Two brothers, the conniving Andy (Hoffman) and the meeker Hank (Hawke), are both in desperate need of some money for different reasons. Andy sets out a plan to rob their parent’s jewelry store to get them both the money they need. It’s meant to be a victimless crime, but in true noir fashion, the robbery goes south, and things get progressively out of hand from there. There are lots of solid twists and turns in the non-linear script by Kelly Masterson, but Lumet’s direction and the lead performances, along with some juicy supporting roles, are what make Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead an essential neo-noir of the 21st century.
Science fiction is an oft-popular genre mash-up with noir. Something about high-tech mixed with lowlifes appeals to a certain section of film fan, and some of the greatest neo-noirs are sci-fi films as well. Films like Blade Runner are seminal alongside more underrated fare like Dark City and Strange Days, while sci-fi movies like The Matrix borrow heavily from noir. In the 21st century, there have been some other stellar examples, but the greatest is Steven Spielberg‘s Philip K. Dick adaptation, Minority Report. It’s a hyper-entertaining, yet surprisingly dark, blockbuster that features some incredible set pieces and incredibly prescient future technology.
In the future of 2054, the police have a pilot program for Precrime, a form of criminal prevention that utilizes three psychic individuals, called Precogs, who can predict murders. Things start to unravel when Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) becomes the newest accused. Anderton, as all Cruise characters are contractually obligated to do, goes on the run, and Spielberg gets to show off in some incredible chase and suspense sequences. Alongside Catch Me if You Can and War of the Worlds, Minority Report feels as close to a return to classic blockbuster Spielberg as the director ever successfully got, even if the two sci-fi efforts are much darker.
Cruise also appears in Michael Mann‘s return to neo-noir, having danced with the genre before with Thief and the heist thriller Heat. Mann was notable for helping develop the neo-noir aesthetic that redefined the visuals of the genre in the ’80s, and Collateral shows a further visual evolution through the use of high-definition digital cameras. While digital cinematography is extremely common now, it was still considered niche in the 2000s, and Mann was a pioneer of its use, and his earlier efforts share a gritty, compressed visual style that remains unique to the era and the genre.
Distinctly set in Los Angeles, the film follows cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) who has the misfortune of picking up Vincent (Cruise), a hitman in town for one night to make a killing (or two or three) and then get out. The film quickly becomes a taut game of cat and mouse between the two characters, as Max tries to outwit the cold-blooded killer in his backseat. Cruise is effectively chilling in the villain role, and Foxx makes for an incredibly likable and relatable protagonist. Mann directs with the same kinetic energy that flows through his best films, and Collateral remains his last true masterpiece.
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Drive is an exercise in stripped-down style over substance. Its visuals and laconic lead character owe a debt to everything from Le Samourai to Mann’s Thief to Walter Hill‘s The Driver. It’s so cool and detached it almost becomes a parody of being cool and detached. What could’ve been a much more conventional action movie certainly changed when Ryan Gosling came aboard and chose Nicolas Winding Refn to direct based on his successful Pusher crime trilogy. Together, the two created something that somehow walks a very thin line between genuine noir melodrama and poe-faced pastiche.
The Driver (Gosling) is a stuntman and car mechanic who moonlights as a getaway driver for criminals. When he meets the intriguing Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son, he develops a genuine affection for them, which is why he gets himself involved in the criminal activities of her ex-con husband Standard (Oscar Isaac), leading to a lot of bloodshed. Drive is slickly produced and immaculately cast. Every actor understands the assignment and gives their archetypes a little more juice than lesser pulp would allow. Refn brings a striking visual sense to the thrilling action scenes and shocking moments of violence.
Despite all the gritty cynicism and moral ambiguity that would indicate the contrary, noir can be very funny; just ask Shane Black. The writer, and later director, became famous for penning the script for the buddy cop movie Lethal Weapon, which traded in witty banter and noirish elements, and in the 21st century, he’s directed two neo-noir classics. The Nice Guys is a ’70s-set crime comedy that utilizes a very different side of Ryan Gosling, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a Hollywood noir black comedy classic.
Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) is a two-bit thief who escapes the police by posing as an actor auditioning for a movie. His audition gets him flown out to L.A. to screen test and attend a few parties. He also ends up witnessing a murder and getting embroiled in a true crime thriller plot alongside private investigator and film consultant Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer). The film is top to bottom filled with Black’s particular brand of humor, and the two leads have sparking chemistry, as does Michelle Monaghan in one of her first major roles. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a neo-noir guaranteed to make you Ha Ha.
Unlike most of the directors previously mentioned on this list, who all have some closer connection to noir or the crime genre, A History of Violence is a modern masterpiece that came from an unexpected director. David Cronenberg is certainly no stranger to violence; it’s just that most of his violent content comes from the horror genre, with a particular predilection for body horror. A History of Violence, based loosely on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, is comparatively conventional. It’s what Cronenberg brings in his unique direction, and the commitment from the cast, that make this such a perfect neo-noir.
Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a small-town diner owner who seems to lead a quiet, normal life with his wife Edie (Maria Bello) and their two children. When two criminals try to violently rob his diner, he fights back with violence. The heroic actions get Tom on the news, and before long some gangsters, led by the intense Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), arrive in town, insisting that Tom is actually a former member of the Philadelphia mob who violently betrayed them before disappearing. Cronenberg isn’t afraid to embrace the more melodramatic elements that are inherent to the genre, as is evident in the subplot involving Tom’s teenage son and his bully, but he also embraces some more bracing elements of sexuality and some gallows humor.
Like Cronenberg, David Lynch is an idiosyncratic filmmaker with a style all his own, and Mulholland Drive is possibly his purest invention. There isn’t any element of this surreal trip through Hollywood that doesn’t feel coded with the director’s creative identity. It’s a film that Lynch insists has a conventional plot, and which many on the internet have dissected to death and back, but also simply operates as a vibe unto itself. Whether you understand everything that occurs in this dark little love story doesn’t make it any less effective.
The film is centered on two disparate women. Betty (Naomi Watts) is an aspiring actress from Canada, while Rita (Laura Harring) has survived a car accident and an attempted murder but is stricken with amnesia. Halfway through the movie, these women disappear and are replaced with new characters who look the same but have vastly different lives. Is one of those pairs just a dream of the other, or more of a nightmare? You can decide for yourself what’s real and what’s not, along with the myriad other Hollywood stories that encircle the central plot. Mullholland Drive is an experience, and any noir fan owes it to themselves to watch it at least once.
Neo-Western collides with neo-noir in this perfect adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s Texas-set crime novel. Joel and Ethan Coen‘s No Country for Old Men is a white-knuckle thriller filled with existential dread and punctuated with stark violence. The film shares some obvious DNA with the sibling filmmakers’ first film, Blood Simple, which was similarly set in Texas and mashed up genres. No Country for Old Men benefits from two decades of filmmaking experience, as the brothers show a confidence in executing every single frame of the film. It’s a southern-fried neo-noir made at the highest level of skill and artistry.
Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a Texas welder who comes across the aftermath of a desert shootout while out hunting. He finds a suitcase of cash and decides to take it, but when he foolishly returns to the scene of the crime, he puts himself in the crosshairs of both criminal parties. Intersecting with Llewelyn’s plot is aging Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who’s beginning to struggle to reckon with the escalating violence he sees. There’s also human terminator Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who has been hired to track down Moss and the money, but also seemingly operates independently of his own whim and amoral code.
While noirs obviously pull influence from the kinds of salacious crimes that make headlines and attract attention, they often aren’t based directly on any one specific crime or criminal. There are, of course, plenty of notable exceptions, such as Bong Joon Ho‘s Memories of Murder, which was steeped in real crimes still unsolved at the time of the movie’s production, lending it a haunting atmosphere. It’s a police procedural about details and obsession, following two South Korean detectives in the ’80s who become consumed by their failures.
Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho) and Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung) are two detectives from different backgrounds and with different approaches to police work who come together to try and capture a vicious serial killer. Through a series of personal and professional mistakes, as well as governmental roadblocks, they find themselves incapable of solving the murders. Their compounding failure weighs on them, and leads to the film’s emotionally devastating final moment. Memories of Murder is another masterclass in tone management from Bong, and the film’s rainy, misty atmosphere adds to the depressive dread that hangs over it.
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