Ever since groundbreaking masterpieces like Chinatown and Blade Runner defined the genre, the neo-noir has been about upending the familiar tropes of film noir, whether that means transplanting them into another genre like sci-fi or updating the post-war fears of old Bogart movies to reflect contemporary fears (like Watergate in the 1970s and 9/11 in the 2000s).
One way to subvert the expectations of film noir is to dial up the violence to a stomach-churning degree. With the hammer-wielding, head-stomping antics of Ryan Gosling’s brooding Driver character, Nicolas Winding Refn made Drive one of the most violent neo-noirs of all time.
Drive (2011)
In the first act of Drive, the Driver is introduced as a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver for the criminal underworld. He falls for his neighbor Irene and connects with both her and her son.
Things get complicated when Irene’s husband Standard gets released from prison and ropes the Driver into a robbery that goes horribly wrong.
Death Wish (1974)
Charles Bronson stars as architect Paul Kersey in Death Wish. He’s not a hard-as-nails criminal; he’s just a regular everyman. When his wife is killed and his daughter is sexually assaulted in a home invasion, he takes up arms and vows to exact justice on his own terms.
While the sequels failed to live up to the authentic grit of the original, 1974’s Death Wish remains the quintessential vigilante thriller.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
With his sophomore directorial effort Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino set out to tell the same stories that have been told a thousand times in film noirs and pulp crime stories, but add a unique, shocking, violent twist to them.
A mobster takes out his boss’ wife, then she overdoses on his heroin. A boxer refuses to take the dive he was bribed by the mob to take, then he and the mob boss end up held captive in a pawnshop basement.
Killing Them Softly (2012)
Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly is a dark satire of the Great Recession. The 2008 banking crisis is reflected in the implosion of the criminal underworld’s economy following a robbery at a high-stakes mafia poker game.
Brad Pitt stars as the brutal enforcer whom the mob hires to get to the bottom of the heist and retrieve the stolen money, while Ray Liotta and James Gandolfini provide strong support.
Fargo (1996)
The Coen brothers’ Fargo is one of the greatest crime movies ever made. William H. Macy plays a mild-mannered car salesman who hires two guys to kidnap his wife in order to squeeze some cash out of his wealthy father-in-law. Things go off the rails when the kidnappers add a couple of homicides to their tab and the father-in-law insists on dealing with them himself.
Frances McDormand gives a revelatory turn as the pregnant police chief investigating the case. Marge Gunderson just might be the greatest cop character ever created. She gets the job done by the book and to her, it’s just work — she’s much more interested in her husband’s painting contest than the murders.
Brawl In Cell Block 99 (2017)
S. Craig Zahler followed up his blood-drenched western debut feature Bone Tomahawk with Brawl in Cell Block 99, an equally brutal neo-noir thriller exploring the darkest corners of the prison system.
Vince Vaughn plays an inmate who’s blackmailed by a crime boss threatening to perform an experimental abortion procedure on his pregnant wife. He has to beat and gouge prison guards until he’s transferred to an underground cell block where he has to kill a protected prisoner.
Dirty Harry (1971)
If Clint Eastwood’s most iconic role isn’t the Man with No Name from the Dollars trilogy, then it’s definitely tough-as-nails vigilante cop Harry Callahan from Don Siegel’s gritty masterpiece Dirty Harry.
While getting chewed out by the mayor for operating outside the law, Callahan hunts down a serial killer known as Scorpio — heavily inspired by the unsolved crimes of the Zodiac.
John Wick (2014)
From Hong Kong action thrillers to French crime movies, Keanu Reeves’ action-packed 2014 comeback vehicle John Wick combined a number of disparate cinematic influences.
Film noir was also a huge influence on the movie, which can be seen in its neon-drenched set pieces, morally dubious cast of characters, and high-contrast lighting.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Paul Schrader wrote a powerful, introspective study of isolation while he was living in his car and Martin Scorsese brought that script to life by looking through a cynical lens at the trash-filled streets of New York. Taxi Driver is one of the definitive post-Watergate neo-noirs.
Robert De Niro gives a career-defining performance as a Vietnam War veteran who’s inspired to take up arms as a vigilante by a chance encounter with a 12-year-old sex worker. The climactic shootout is so bloody that Scorsese had to desaturate the colors to secure a release.
Oldboy (2003)
A man who’s wrongfully imprisoned for seemingly no reason is released in Park Chan-wook’s revenge thriller Oldboy, and told to find whoever’s responsible for his captivity or he’ll suffer an even worse fate.
There are many great action scenes in this movie, but the most notable one is the hallway fight shot with a tracking camera like a classic beat-‘em-up video game.