It's been another good week for David Fincher's The Killer, which has racked up 44,500,000 viewing hours and 22,300,000 views on Netflix, and is once again top of the streamer's movie-viewing charts. Granted, its closest new competition on Netflix is from the somewhat maligned Monster Hunter movie starring Milla Jovovich, but it's still a good showing – it's not like the list of the best Netflix movies isn't full of plenty of hot competition!
Speaking of which, if you've already watched The Killer and are hankering for more crime thrillers, there's plenty more where that came from. And no, we don't mean Paw Patrol: The Movie.
Heat
Crime movies don't get much better than Michael Mann's masterpiece, which combines exceptional action sequences with superb characterization to create one of the greatest cops-and-robbers movies ever made. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro don't share as much screen time as you might think, but when they do face off it's absolutely incredible. RogerEbert.com calls it "the single greatest Los Angeles crime epic of all time," The Times says it's "outstanding" and Newsweek says "this one sticks to your gut". Just listing the rave reviews would take many more hours than the film's entire running time.
Netflix also has Mann's Public Enemies, which features Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and Christian Bale as the FBI agent on his tail. It's not quite up there with Heat, but it's still a great gangster movie that's well worth streaming.
Good Time
Robert Pattinson is spectacular in this unusual crime drama, which begins with a robbery gone badly wrong. With his younger brother in prison, small-time crook Pattinson has to navigate New York's underworld to try to get him out again. It's an incredibly tense thriller that feels as if it's been designed specifically to make you feel bad, and it's almost unbearably tense throughout.
This is the movie that landed Pattinson the Batman role, and you can see why: it's a career-best performance in a movie that's very different from your average crime thriller. Critics have compared it to classics such as Dog Day Afternoon and After Hours, but while it's of similar quality it's very much its own movie. As Alexa Dalby of Dog and Wolf put it, "it's a nonstop, adrenalin-fuelled night of bad decisions getting worse".
State of Play
Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams star in this twisty crime drama about a rising congressman and an investigate journalist who become embroiled in what at first seem to be unconnected but very brutal murders. Some of the plot twists are a little telegraphed, but the film overcomes its minor flaws with sheer star power, and Crowe is great in the central role of maverick reporter Cal McAffrey.
Cal is a dinosaur and he knows it, but he and McAdams' ambitious blogger Delia Fry make an excellent, old-school cinematic odd couple as their investigation takes them deeper into the dark heart of politics. As The Age put it, "there's something here for almost everyone."
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