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crime

The Ice Harvest * Harold Ramis (2005)

The title of this film has not become entirely clear to me, but “The Ice Harvest” is a crime comedy, a bit in the screwballish Coen style. The film starts with a big robbery that laywer Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) and Vic Cavanaugh (Billy Bob Thornton) have commited. The rest of the film mostly follows Charlie. The deal was that both would spend Christmas evening as normal as possible and skip their dull town with the money the day after. Of course things do not go as planned, the two get chased by a hitman and an amusing film unfolds with Christmas receptions, drunkarts, family intrueges, stipclubs and a few bloody encounters and shootouts. The dialogues are quite funny here and there as well.

Not a high-flyer, but not a bad film either.

Zodiac * David Fincher (2007)

A film about the serial killer that called himself Zodiac from David Fincher whom we all known for films such as “Se7en”, “Fight Club” and “The Strange Case Of Benjamin Button”. Ficher took over 2,5 hours to tell the story of the killer of whom it is not with certainty known who he was. The film is based on the book by Robert Graysmith. Actually, the film is about how Graysmith wrote his book.
Graysmith was a cartoonist for one of the newspapers that received information of the media-horny Zodiac killer. Even when the Zodiac became less active, Graysmith continued his investigations.
The first part of the film is a thriller. We see the Zodiac performing his hideous crimes. Lateron the focus shifts more to the investigations and then to Graysmith. Obvious is the despair of not being able to find and catch the killer. The film has a good atmosphere and gives an interesting insight into a gruely story.

Animal Kingdom * David Michôd (2010)

IMDb.com“Animal Kingdom” is a descent thriller/drama about a criminal family. The film opens with a pretty black scene after which the main character, Joshua, is taken in with his larger family under the motherly care of his grandmother. Pretty soon ‘J’ is submurged in the violent world of his cousins and uncles. When the police (mainly the moustaches Guy Pearce) think Joshua might be a way to take care of the family, things get rough.

Like I said, a descent film.

Wolf * Jim Taihuttu (2013)

In this Dutch film we follow Majid and Adil, two small criminals of Maroccan descent. Majid is on parole and living with his parents, but Adil remained the in the criminal milieu, rapidly drawing Majid back in when he is out of prison. Trying to remain on right track Majid keeps falling back in old customs. Then when he picks up the sport he is good at, kickboxing, Majib seems to find a patron, but this again navigates him in dubious circles. Moreover, his uncontrollable anger keeps getting him in trouble.
“Wolf” (the word means the same in English and Dutch) is much more of a drama than the crime thriller it is listed as. The film is fairly good and gives a nice peak in the slightly hopeless situation of second generation Maroccans. Taihuttu uses a lot of bleak ‘living-factory’ shots to add to the atmosphere (not really an advertisement of my country!) Not the 7.4 that the film gets on IMDb for me, but not a bad film either.

à l’Aveugle * Xavier Palud (2012)

“à l’Aveugle” starts as a serial killer horror/thriller, but fortunately quickly develops to a crime film. The troubled police officer Lassalle investigates seemingly unrelated brutal murders together with his young protege Héloïse. Soon his suspision falls on the blind man (from the title) Narvik (Lambert Wilson, the Merovignian from “The Matrix” films). This Narvik is an unlikely candidate so Lassalle’s superior find his accusations a bad idea. The typical story unfolds in which Lassalle and Narvik compete. Then the story gets a few twists (and a couple of unlikely elements) and “A Blind Man” becomes a rather typical, but not too bad, crime film.

Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da * Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2011)

I did not see a whole lot of Turkish films, but “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia” had been on my wishlist for some time. The film starts suddenly with a group of people in the desert. Slowly it becomes clear that they are policemen, a doctor, a prosecuter and a soldier with two suspects of a murder trying to find the body. The first two-thirds of this 150 minute film are very nice with beautiful camera work and a Coen-like atmosphere with dark humour and a minimalistic approach. Then the film stops even more suddenly than it started. In the last part the film is more ‘normal’ again. The characters have quite long conversations about a variety of subjects and at one point the party goes to a remote village to pause and these elements give a nice peek into the rural Turkish society.
A nice film to see some time when you want something tranquil.

Intelligence (series) * Chris Haddock (2005-7)

I find “Intelligence” a very interesting, Canadian show. There have been two series, but the end of the second is so open that a third can always follow. After six years, I do not suppose that this is going to happen. If you like high-speed and especially high-information series, “Intelligence” may be for you. It is a crime-series with shows the view of all involved parties, government, criminals, etc. All these different groups have enmities, but also contact; everybody tries to build a network that is most benificial for their own goals and it is hard to keep up with who is who and what is what and what everybody is upto and that exactly is the charm of the series.
We have Mary Spalding of Organised Crime who is trying to set up an international intelligence network by catching criminals and recruiting them for information. Additionally Mary goes at lengths to move ‘up the ladder’ and becoming head of CSIS (I think this is the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) for which she has to manipulate things. Mary has a couple of employees and colleagues who also try their best to get rid of Mary and other people for their own carreers. According to the cover, the spider in the series is Jimmy Reardom, a crafty businessman working both upper- and underground with his close pal Ronnie Delmonico. Two two run a stripclub the Chick A Dee, Jimmy has a cargo fleet and a lumber business. Together the two smuggle and sell weed, but no harddrugs. Jimmy is an informant for Mary trying as much to get information out of her as she out of him.
Espionage, counter-espionage, rivalling criminal groups, rivalling government agencies and all that on the Canadian/USA border (the series play in Vancouver and Seattle). The acting is great, the stories wonderfull, the characters interesting. “Intelligence” remains a big-audience production in the sense that it is ‘just’ a well-produced crime thriller, but if you like the genre, you might want to look out for these series.

The Guard * John Michael McDonagh (2011)

The guard from the title is Sergeant Gerry Boyle, a local police officer in some remote, Irish village. It is hard to say if the man is completely corrupt or wholly integer, or if he is a complete idiot or a genius, a fact is that he does things his own way without worrying about what others think. While his job usually does not bring anything much more exciting than youngsters from the city playing with drugs, things get more serious when the FBI suspects a big drug trafficking near Boyle’s village, the first elements of which proceed the FBI. FBI agent Wendell Everett is the agent who has to try to work with Boyle. Of course this develops into the usual love/hate film relation, but this works well enough.
“The Guard” is mostly a comedy with snappy dialogues, Irish jokes about the rest of the world and an enlarged contrast between the Irish countryside and the city. It is an amusing film with wonderfull characters and a good sense of humour.

Luther (series 1) * Neil Cross (2010)

“Luther” is a BBC series. When I got it I thought it was a mini series of six episodes, but according to IMdB there are three series and the show is stil running. The main character is John Luther, a troubled detective whom we see having problems with his temper, his wife, his boss and colleagues and most of all, a murderer that he enounters in the first episode. In the meantime Luther tries to solve crimes, but the focus of the series quickly moves from the cases on his desk to Luther himself. However unsympathetic he his, Luther is stil the emphatisable main character, but perhaps this is more because of the people around him. “Luther” is an alright crime drama with some obligatory gruesome crimes. It is certainly not a masterpiece though.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy * Tomas Alfredson (2011)

After a stack of Scandinavian films, Alfredson comes with a very American movie. The film with the strange title is not really a novelty with its 1950’ies style cold war spy thriller. It is well done though. The story unfolds nice and slowly (just as the pace of the film is) and also the title is worked well into the story, they explain eachother. The British secret service sends a few men away after a job that went wrong in Hungary. Later one of them is asked to investigate the possibility of a “mole” high up in the organisation. A nice ‘whodunnit’ develops with a good atmosphere and good acting. The film can perhaps be described as a very slow thriller. I found it nice, but not particularly great.