Category: Crime

  • The Kid Detective (2020)

    The Kid Detective (2020)

    Tone is such a tricky thing to get it right, particularly when you are juggling tones while blurring genres. The Kid Detective (2020) begins with a goofy premise – a kid detective (like Encyclopaedia Brown) who solved neighbourhood crimes, now a washed up adult still solving “cases” – and eventually becomes one of my favourite… Read.

  • Deadly Fight In Hiroshima (1973)

    Another Lewis Rice O’Donnell recommendation, The Yakuza Papers are a five film series of gangster movies directed by Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) based on news stories and journalists covering the post-war era. Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight In Hiroshima (1973) aka Hiroshima Death Match is the second movie in the series, and our… Read.

  • Knock Off (1998)

    Knock Off (1998)

    Director Tsui Hark’s gift to cinema: a POV shot of a foot going into a shoe. A knock off shoe that we receive extreme close ups of the wear and tear suffered as Jean Claude Van Damme pulls Rob Schneider on a cart in a competitive race through the streets of Hong Kong. And this… Read.

  • Last Man Standing (1996)

    Last Man Standing (1996)

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    Last Man Standing (1996), Walter Hill’s remake of Yojimbo (already remade as A Fistful Of Dollars), is almost mythical yet reductively basic. Set in a ghost town named Jericho that nobody else lives in except for two gangs fighting over the same turf, a state of purgatory only destabilised by the arrival of a gun-for-hire… Read.

  • Mona Lisa (1986)

    Mona Lisa (1986)

    Bob Hoskins searching for a mystery woman through peep shows and seedy clubs to the sounds of Genesis’ ‘In Too Deep’ is such an iconic 1980s neo-noir moment. Mona Lisa (1986) is directed by Neil Jordan and earned accolades and awards for Hoskins’ performance as George, a small time crook released from prison after a… Read.