Film-Noir: 51

In 1939, Stanton “Stan” Carlisle burns down his Midwestern home after putting a body in a hole in the floor and takes a job as a carny. When the travelling carnival’s geek becomes ill, owner Clem enlists Stan to help him dispose of the man, and explains that he seeks out alcoholics or drug addicts, who are often men with troubled pasts, and lures them in with promises of a temporary job and gives them opium-laced alcohol. He uses their dependence to physically and mentally abuse them until they sink into madness and depravity, thus creating a geek for his carnival. Clem then shows Stan where he stores the moonshine he brews to control the carnies, warning him not to ...

In 1950s New York City, Lionel Essrog works at a detective agency alongside Gilbert Coney, Danny Fantl, and Tony Vermonte. Their boss, Frank Minna, rescued them as children from an abusive orphanage. Nicknamed “Motherless Brooklyn” by Frank, Lionel has Tourette syndrome and OCD, often alienating him from people, but his strong verbal and photographic memory make him a good detective. Working a secret case, Frank asks Lionel and Gilbert to shadow him to a meeting. Lionel listens over the phone as Frank presents documents that threaten a business deal for a man named William Lieberman, who’s there with his assistant Lou and an extremely large henchman. When Frank tries ...

In 1926, Joe Coughlin, a World War I veteran of Irish descent and the prodigal son of Boston police captain Thomas Coughlin, falls in love with Emma Gould, the mistress of notorious gangster Albert White, the boss of the Irish Gang of Boston who Joe and his friends have been targeting in a series of robberies. Thomas objects to the relationship and advises Joe against his criminal activities, warning him that his wrongdoing will catch up with him eventually. White’s rival, Italian Mafia boss Maso Pescatore, finds out about their affair and blackmails Joe to kill White. Joe refuses, and instead he and Emma decide to flee to California. To fund the trip, Joe commits a bank heist ...

In 1985 in rural Kinnakee, Kansas, 8-year old Libby Day is the sole survivor of the massacre of her mother and two older sisters. Responding to the police’s leading questions, she tells them that her brother teenage Ben committed the crime. In the present day, Libby has made a living from donations sent by strangers to the little girl they saw on the news. With donations drying up, she is hard up for cash when she is approached by Lyle Wirth to make a personal appearance at his “True Crime” club. She reluctantly agrees to go and answer questions about her past for $700. Back in 1985, Ben comes to the breakfast table with his hair dyed black. He has a tense ...

Mob City is an American neo-noir crime drama television series created by Frank Darabont for TNT. It is based on real-life accounts of the L.A.P.D. and gangsters in 1940s Los Angeles as chronicled in John Buntin’s book L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City. The series premiered on December 4, 2013. On February 10, 2014, TNT canceled the series after one season. In Germany the series was released via polyband on DVD and Regional lockout-free Blu-ray on July 2, 2015, however there are no known plans to release the series on home ...

During the American financial crisis and presidential election campaign in the fall of 2008, Johnny “Squirrel” Amato plans to rob a Mafia poker game. He enlists Frankie, a former business associate, and Russell, a heroin-addicted Australian expatriate who is stealing purebred dogs for money. They decide to target a game run by Markie Trattman, who is known to have previously orchestrated an inside job by paying two men to rob his own illegal poker game. Squirrel anticipates that Markie will be the obvious suspect because of this, and the Mafia will simply have him killed without investigating further. Frankie and Russell, although ...

Tetro is a 2009 drama film written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich and Maribel Verdú. Filming took place in 2008 in Buenos Aires, Patagonia, and Spain. An international co-production between the United States, Argentina, Spain and Italy, the film received a limited release in the U.S. on June 11, 2009. Set in Argentina with a high content of film noir, this story of the reunion of two ...

The Second Wind is a 2007 French crime film directed by Alain Corneau and starring Daniel Auteuil and Monica Bellucci. It is a remake of the 1966 film Le Deuxième Souffle. Gu, a famous gangster, has just escaped from jail. All french police is after him. Before leaving the country with Manouche, the woman he loves, Gu needs a final job to get some money. The job works, but a police’s scheming makes Gu appear as a traitor to his own accomplices. Gu will do whatever it takes to clean ...

While working an undercover prostitute sting operation in a nightclub to arrest a pimp named Neptune, Miami-Dade Police detectives James “Sonny” Crockett and Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs receive a frantic phone call from their former informant Alonzo Stevens. Stevens reveals that he’s leaving town, and, believing his wife Leonetta to be in immediate danger, asks Rico to check on her. Crockett learns that Stevens was working as an informant for the FBI but has been compromised. Crockett and Tubbs quickly contact FBI Special Agent in Charge John Fujima and warn him about Stevens’ safety. Tracking down Stevens through a ...

In June 1959, Louis Simo, a Los Angeles private investigator more interested in generating an income than in devotion to his clients, is spying on the wife of a man named Chester Sinclair to find if she is cheating. On a visit to his own ex-wife Laurie, Simo learns that his son is upset over the recent death of actor George Reeves, who played Superman on television. Reeves was found dead inside his Beverly Hills home with a gunshot wound to the head, which the police ruled as a suicide. Simo learns from a former police colleague that the Reeves suicide has aspects that the cops do not want to touch. Sensing the potential for making a name for ...

LAPD Detectives Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert and Lee Blanchard are paired as partners after engaging in a boxing match to raise funds for the department. Lee introduces Bucky to his girlfriend Kay Lake, and the trio becomes inseparable. Bucky is shocked when Kay tells him she isn’t sleeping with Lee, and later tries to seduce him, but he refuses. He also discovers that Kay has been branded with the initials “BD”, for Bobby DeWitt, the gangster whose arrest and conviction for a big bank robbery made Lee’s career. Soon after, on January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Short’s dismembered body is found and she is dubbed “The Black Dahlia” by the ...

Major Bennett Marco commanded a famous U.S. Army raid during the 1991 Gulf War. For his role in that mission, Sergeant First Class Raymond Shaw was awarded the Medal of Honor for single-handedly defeating the enemy and rescuing all but two of his men. In a dystopian near-future (implied to be 2008), America has become defined by xenophobia, de facto martial law, environmental degradation, and increasing corporate control; Shaw is a famous U.S. Congressman. His ruthless mother, Virginia Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, uses her influence to secure his nomination as a vice-presidential candidate over the favorite, Senator Tom Jordan. Raymond is shy and withdrawn, but opens up to his ...

The panoramic tale of Savannah’s eccentricities focuses on a murder and the subsequent trial of Jim Williams, a self-made man, art collector, antiques dealer, bon vivant, and semi-closeted homosexual. John Kelso, a magazine reporter with one book — Before the Fall — to his name, arrives in Savannah, amid beautiful architecture and odd doings, to write a feature for Town & Country on one of Williams’ famous Christmas parties. After being unable to find a taxi, Kelso gets a ride from a tour-bus driver to Jones Street. After a tour of Savannah’s tourist hotspots, Kelso alights at Forsyth Park. Making his way to his lodging in ...

Conspiracy-theorist and New York City taxi driver Jerry Fletcher continually expounds his ideas to Alice Sutton, a lawyer at the Justice Department. She humors him because he once saved her from a mugging, but is unaware he spies on her at her home. Her own work is to solve the mystery of her father’s murder. Seeing suspicious activity everywhere, Jerry identifies some men as CIA workers, follows them into a building, and is captured. The interrogator injects a wheelchair-bound Jerry with LSD and questions him using torture. Jerry experiences terrifying hallucinations and flashbacks, panics, and manages to escape by incapacitating the interrogator by biting his nose and kicking ...

In early 1950s Los Angeles, LAPD Sergeant Edmund “Ed” Exley is determined to live up to the reputation of his father, famed detective Preston Exley, who was killed by an unknown assailant whom Exley secretly nicknamed “Rollo Tomasi”. Already isolated from other officers by his intelligence and career ambitions, he volunteers to testify against them in the “Bloody Christmas” case in exchange for promotion to Detective Lieutenant, against the advice of precinct captain Dudley Smith, who reminds Exley that he doesn’t have what it takes to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, if that’s what it would take to prevent him from going ...

In 1948 Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is laid off from his job at Champion Aircraft, and needs money to pay his mortgage. Easy’s friend Joppy introduces him to DeWitt Albright, a white man looking for a missing white woman, Daphne Monet. Explaining that Monet’s disappearance led her wealthy fiancé, Todd Carter, to drop out of the Los Angeles mayoral race, Albright pays Easy to find Daphne, who is known to frequent the juke joints along Central Avenue. Easy begins his search at an illegal club, where he sees the bouncer, Junior Fornay, eject a white man. Learning that his friend Dupree Brouchard’s girlfriend, Coretta James, is a confidant of Daphne, Easy spends the night ...

Hardened criminal Dean Keaton lies badly wounded on a ship docked in San Pedro Bay. He is confronted by a mysterious figure he calls ‘Keyser’, who shoots him dead and sets fire to the ship. The next day, the police recover twenty-seven bodies and only two survivors: Arkosh Kovash, a Hungarian mobster hospitalized with severe burns, and Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint, a con artist with cerebral palsy. U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan flies to Los Angeles from New York City to interrogate Verbal. The men are left alone in a borrowed office belonging to LAPD police sergeant Jeff Rabin, while Kovash is visited in the hospital by FBI agent Jack Baer. The events that led Keaton, ...

In Utah, Nancy Breyers is a defense lawyer who is inexplicably in love with client Michael Bosworth, a sociopathic convict. During a break from a courtroom hearing, Nancy sneaks a gun to Bosworth. After Bosworth snaps a guard’s neck, Bosworth and Nancy slip away. Bosworth tears at Nancy’s clothing and leaves her behind, where she will tell authorities Bosworth held her at gunpoint during his escape. He speeds off in a car with his brother Wally, and their partner, the hulking, half-witted Albert, then changes cars with one Nancy has left for him in a remote location. In the meantime, decorated Vietnam veteran Tim Cornell arrives at his ...

In 1948 Los Angeles, businessman Julius “Jake” Berman hires seasoned private investigator J. J. “Jake” Gittes to catch his wife, Kitty, in the act of committing adultery. During the sting, Berman unexpectedly kills his wife’s lover, Mark Bodine, who turns out to also be his partner in a real estate development company. Gittes, not having known this, suddenly finds himself under scrutiny for his role in what appears to be a premeditated murder; the key piece of evidence is a wire recording Gittes had set up which captured audio of the illicit love meeting, the confrontation, and the killing of Bodine. However, the audio does not make it clear whether ...

A young woman walking home from her birthday party is stalked by a man in distinctive sneakers. After she drops one of her presents, a police officer offers to escort her to her front door. The camera reveals that the policeman is wearing the same sneakers as the stalker. The next day, divorced New Orleans police detective Wes Block is playing football with his daughters Penny and Amanda. They take in a stray dog, adding to the several strays they have already taken in. As the family gets ready to go to a Saints game, Block is summoned to a crime scene, forcing him to break his plans with his daughters. The young woman has been strangled in her bed. ...