Polanski has a go at the film noir detective thriller, very bleak, very twisted and very menacing it is to. Nicholson plays a private-eye in pre-war LA who is hired to pursue an adultery case, but finds himself embroiled in a complicated murder investigation. find out more...

Lumet's complex and atmospheric thriller is based on a real event. Pacino is superb as the neurotic and incompetent gay bankrobber who needs the money from the robbery to finance his lover's sex change operation. The film's beauty is it's closely detailed psychological observation. Excellent.

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Ming is a sergeant in the Hong Kong police force, but his true colours lie with his Triad boss; Yan works for the same Triad boss but his real loyalties are with the police. Both men have spent years leading the same furtive and often fraught existence but for opposing sides, and it is only when a drugs bust goes spectacularly wrong that the two moles become aware of the other's existence, though not their identity. Infernal Affairs is a hard boiled character driven thriller that concentrates he find out more...

Leonard Shelby's wife has been brutally murdered, and he is obsessed by the need to find out why and exact revenge; But Shelby's search is impeded by his short term memory loss, never really knowing whom he can trust, or indeed who he knows, and having to resort to the desperate measure of tattooing his body with clues as the only reliable way of holding onto any evidence he's garnered. 'Memento' is an awesome psychological thriller, riddled with deceit and betrayal, your chances of guessing the find out more...

Chucked out of Cuba as an undesirable by Castro a small time crook claws his way to the top in the Miami cocaine trade. A megolamaniac rise in a twisted version of the American dream. Very violent, foul mouthed and bloody - a telling parable for the 80s. find out more...

A morally corrupt city is the backdrop to a series of brutal murders, each representing the 7 deadly sins, which disillusioned old cop Freeman and rookie Pitt must solve with only various cryptic clues to go on. Violent, atmospheric and intelligent - one of the shockers of the decade. Watch it. find out more...

Marv is a lunkhead of incredible strength, an aggressive power he puts to merciless use when his one true love is murdered. Hartigan is the embittered, but moralistic cop who's sworn to protect a stripper and Dwight is the lover of Shellie and the inadvertent dark angel of Gail's Old Town girls, a feisty group of hookers. These are just a selection of the random characters in Rodriguez's adaptation of Frank Miller's Sin City graphic novels and it's difficult to decide which of the two is the bi find out more...

A highly acclaimed and influential account of Algeria's turbulent past made in psuedo-documentary style. The tense plot surrounds the rise of nationalist organisations in '54 and the French government's attempts to quell them. This film was the prototype for most political thrillers of the 1970s. find out more...