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Your Top 5 Favourite Crime Films of All Time


Tony Moanero
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3 minutes ago, Remmie said:

Would Shawshank redemption fall under crime?

He didn't do it so no 

 

EDIT: Although this is funny to read

 

Shawshank: Andy is guilty

 

He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here. He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place…

..because he was a sociopath, and he was guilty.

First off I love the Shawshank Redemption (I’ve seen it over 50 times). I also like to watch movies with a different twist, so I’m going to pose this theory out there for everyone to think about and discuss. Warning— as I started writing this up I got sad with the prospect it may be true. If you don’t want to maintain the purity forever click away now.

Andy Dufresne is in fact an “icy and remorseless” killer who manipulated everyone around him.

-He’s a chess player, and he has no one to play with. While chess is pervasive in the movie, we never quite see Andy’s mind in this mode. It’s all about chess, but we as the audience never seem to see the game. In contemporary stories (such as House of Cards) we get to see the story from the viewpoint of the main character (Frank in House of Cards). But we forget that the story of the Shawshank Redemption is told from the point of view of Red. By his own admission chess is a total mystery to him. Andy is surrounded by pawns — people below his intelligence. He will let them in on whatever he wants them to see as he plots his escape. Red is explaining a game of checkers to us. We don’t see the chess game actually going on.

-He only befriended Red when he needed something that only Red could provide. Not for companionship or friendship. That developed after the request.

-He started it. It was Andy who first offered financial help to the guards. He targeted the Captain Hadley (let’s say the queen on the chess board). Red speculates maybe it was to curry favor with the guards or make friends among the cons. I think he was dead on here and the reason he sat quietly with a strange smile across his face is the board was set and it was finally time for him to start playing his game.

-Andy is an unreliable source for our narrator. The interactions perceive between the warden and Andy are based off what Andy tells Red and the others. The only real observation Red has directly between the Warden and Andy always strikes me (if you can remember it) as interesting. The warden looks completely perplexed, listening to Andy like a school child would listen to a teacher. Andy tells Red stories in the library stacks like gossip, villainizing someone who is an easy mark already— the hated Warden. The actual (observed) Warden doesn’t seem sharp enough to concoct the schemes Andy only helped facilitate. Perhaps it was Andy who was puppeteering the Warden until the Warden suspected he had gotten too far involved. Warden was a hardass, sure. But these schemes didn’t come online until Andy was in the picture.

-Andy concocted someone out of thin air. He knew the cracks, and he had the ability. He was a ‘Rembrandt’ . Why do this? Clearly the Warden didn’t seem to have the smarts to think “that many moves ahead” regarding the money laundering. Andy did. Andy wanted a golden parachute for when he escaped. So he set things in motion so he would be in a position to walk out of bank after bank with the money. If Andy was an honest man, why not just leave the trails pointing to the Warden? Why go the extra mile?

-Tommy may have been Andy’s ultimate work of art. I think here of Hannibal Lecter getting Miggs to swallow his own tongue. Tommy “I don’t read so good” becomes Andy’s one on one project for months. MONTHS. Let’s suppose that Andy plants the idea of the confession in Tommy’s head. Or that he knows Tommy enough to know he will make up a story like that to appease his new best friend. We all know those compulsive liar types. The Warden did too. Andy was shocked that the Warden was smart enough to see through this bullshit. But let’s say just in case he told Tommy that if anything happened to him he needed to break out of Shawshank and get the truth out to the public.

-Tommy was trying to escape, and the Warden wasn’t lying when he said it broke Hadley’s heart to have to shoot him. So break it down like this… The Warden is starting to get wise to the fact that Andy is seriously a bad guy and that he (the Warden) is being manipulated. His only recourse is to lock him away while he tries to figure out what to do and get his arms around the situation. During this time, Tommy decides to make a break for it, and Hadley actually does have to fire on him and kill him. Remember the interaction we see on film is only what Red supposes happens. What else do we know about Hadley? I heard that Hadley cried like a baby when they arrested him. Its possible Hadley was a seriously messed up man, who hid behind aggression and fell apart when he killed Tommy (as the Warden said). When he was arrested, he just broke down. At this point, Andy was ready to go. He had amassed enough money, created a reasonable doubt story to his guilt, and simultaneously painted the perfect picture of a Warden behind everything.

-Andy goes away to the Pacific which has no memory. No memory of the judge (the only possible intellectual peer) who saw through him and called him for what he was.

Now watch the scene where he crawls out of the sewer and stretches his hands in the air, but picture in his head he is laughing maniacally.

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This is an incredibly strong genre. Can’t rank them or leave any out, sorry. So:

 

Pulp Fiction, Seven, Heat, The Shawshank Redemption, Reservoir Dogs, Ocean’s 11 (Soderberg one), Inside Man, 25th Hour, Manhunter, Godfather I & II, The Silence Of The Lambs, Midnight Run, The French Connection, Chinatown, City Of God, The Untouchables, Mystic River, The Dark Knight, State Of Grace, 48 Hours, Red Rock West, The Last Seduction, Starred Up, Papillon, The Grifters, The Fugitive, The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa, Assault On Precinct 13, The Crying Game, A Prophet. 

 

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2 minutes ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

Fargo

Heat

Usual Suspects

Robocop

LA Confidential

Honourable mentions to

 

Die Hard

Pulp Fiction

Reservoir Dogs

Training Day

The Long Kiss Goodnight

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2 minutes ago, Paul said:

This is an incredibly strong genre. Can’t rank them or leave any out, sorry. So:

 

Pulp Fiction, Seven, Heat, The Shawshank Redemption, Reservoir Dogs, Ocean’s 11 (Soderberg one), Inside Man, 25th Hour, Manhunter, Godfather I & II, The Silence Of The Lambs, Midnight Run, The French Connection, Chinatown, City Of God, The Untouchables, Mystic River, The Dark Knight, State Of Grace, 48 Hours, Red Rock West, The Last Seduction, Starred Up, Papillon, The Grifters, The Fugitive, The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa, Assault On Precinct 13, The Crying Game, A Prophet. 

 

I considered Inside Man and Seven is a great film.

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1 minute ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

I considered Inside Man and Seven is a great film.

Yeah. Loads of great films. I know it’s a bit shit not sticking to the rule, but I genuinely couldn’t separate the first ten or so that popped into my head. I hadn’t thought of crime as a movie genre before, but I’m clearly a fan...

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4 minutes ago, Paul said:

This is an incredibly strong genre. Can’t rank them or leave any out, sorry. So:

 

Pulp Fiction, Seven, Heat, The Shawshank Redemption, Reservoir Dogs, Ocean’s 11 (Soderberg one), Inside Man, 25th Hour, Manhunter, Godfather I & II, The Silence Of The Lambs, Midnight Run, The French Connection, Chinatown, City Of God, The Untouchables, Mystic River, The Dark Knight, State Of Grace, 48 Hours, Red Rock West, The Last Seduction, Starred Up, Papillon, The Grifters, The Fugitive, The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa, Assault On Precinct 13, The Crying Game, A Prophet. 

 

Yeah, narrowing it down to just five films is extremely difficult.

 

Five that just missed out

 

1. Serpico

2. Mississippi Burning

3. Catch Me If You Can

4. The Sting

5. Bonnie & Clyde

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6 minutes ago, Tony Moanero said:

Just a bit of fun, mate. People probably wouldn’t have bothered participating if I’d included every sub-genre.

I don't now, it would be more fun if you make it more challenging with defined criteria, like the top heist films thread was... top 5 con artist films, buddy-buddy cop films, top 5 police procedurals, armed robberies, burglaries, hostages, top 5 crime villains, 5 best plot twists in thrillers, top five maverick cops, top 5 action thrillers etc.  

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3 minutes ago, SasaS said:

I don't now, it would be more fun if you make it more challenging with defined criteria, like the top heist films thread was... top 5 con artist films, buddy-buddy cop films, top 5 police procedurals, armed robberies, burglaries, hostages, top 5 crime villains, 5 best plot twists in thrillers, top five maverick cops, top 5 action thrillers etc.  

Yeah. 'Top 5 Crime Thriller where the wife did it but the man gets sent down'

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