10 Detective Movie Masterpieces (That You’ve Probably Never Heard Of)

If you only want the best of the best when it comes to detective movies, and need something lesser-known, then look no further than these hidden gems.

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If you’re a fan of detective movies then finding the right fix for your craving can be a tough task. There’s no shortage of thrillers in the world that use elements of mystery and deception in their plots but there are very few entries into the genre that can truly surprise a fan that knows all the tricks of the trade, let alone keep them guessing until the very end.

With this in mind, let’s look at 10 criminally underrated detective movies from off the beaten path and hopefully uncover some hidden gems for even the most discerning of aficionados.

10 Cutter’s Way (1981)

Ivan Passer’s cult legend is unassuming enough to be passed by without a second thought but it never should be. Its war-weary view of post-Vietnam American cynicism is so unforgiving that the whole movie really is quite anomalous, not least for containing perhaps the greatest film performance of the late John Heard (still best known as ‘the dad from Home Alone’).

Heard plays the titular Cutter, a physically and psychologically maimed veteran of the war, who ropes his guilt-ridden best friend (played by Jeff Bridges) into a feverish conspiracy dream that begins to make more and more sense the crazier that it becomes.

9 Zero Effect (1998)

Debatably the best movie adaptation of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s world-famous detective stories starring the perennially popular sleuth Sherlock Holmes, and without doubt one of the greatest examples of how the character can be modernized, Jake Kasdan’s very loose retelling of ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ stars Bill Pullman as the Holmes figure, Daryl Zero, with Ben Stiller as his Watson, Steve Arlo, and Kim Dickens as his Irene Adler.

Fittingly quirky given its origins and unafraid to delve into the darker and more emotional side of them, Zero Effect is a textbook example of a cinematic hidden gem that’s steeped in both distinct 90s characteristics and timeless dramatic dexterity.

8 Klute (1971)

The first movie in what would come to be known as director Alan J. Pakula’s paranoia trilogy, Klute injected what was then a practically-unseen level of European stylistic flair and subversiveness into mainstream American filmmaking with this superficially straightforward story of Donald Sutherland’s beat cop turned rookie detective and Jane Fonda’s harassed call girl.

Its most enduring legacy is Fonda’s very deserving win for Best Actress at the Oscars but its frequently-horrific atmosphere allows it to stand out more and more as time goes on as a movie that was well ahead of its time.

7 Winter’s Bone (2010)

Set in the seemingly-post-apocalyptic poverty of Missouri’s Ozark mountains, Debra Granik’s adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel may look, on the surface, like a slow or empty story but is overflowing with detail in every item haphazardly lying around and in every solitary word that is and isn’t spoken by the characters.

Jennifer Lawrence was Oscar-nominated for her lead turn as a young woman forced to track down her bail-skipping father with only her ne’er-do-well uncle ‘Teardrop’ as an ally in a hostile world ruled by strictly enforced silence, but it’s perhaps John Hawkes (also Oscar-nominated for his role) who really steals the show as the compelling and terrifying Teardrop.

6 Deep Red (1975)

When discussing the peak of legendary filmmaker Dario Argento, often referred to in his heyday as ‘the Italian Hitchcock’, the movie most commonly put forward as his greatest is 1977’s Suspiria but a strong argument can be made for his previous movie being his true magnum opus.

Profondo Rosso, known in English as Deep Red or sometimes The Hatchet Murders (despite nobody in the movie being murdered with a hatchet), is mostly remembered as a horror movie, which it also is, but the director’s flair for the detective mystery elements of the famous Giallo subgenre was never as strong as it was here. The plot is, in many ways, an amalgam of Argento’s first three movies and a perfect example of Giallo’s core tropes but it also perfects his fish-out-of-water protagonist with David Hemmings’ skittish English pianist.

5 The Chaser (2008)

Director Na Hong-jin exploded onto the global film scene with his debut feature, The Chaser, in 2008 and has only grown in notoriety with each movie since; finally breaking through into the beginnings of mainstream success with his wholly idiosyncratic horror movie The Wailing.

An equally disturbing and unpredictable story, The Chaser revolves around the search for a missing sex worker as a psychotic serial killer bumps up against her pimp, who was once a detective. Full of all those satisfying ways that South Korean cinema both meets and defies expectations, this is highly recommended for those who love the darkness of directors like David Fincher and Park Chan-wook and a must for fans of Bong Joon-ho’s modern classic Memories of Murder.

4 Broken Flowers (2005)

A much more easygoing kind of amateur detective mystery, but still full of its own lingering qualities, Broken Flowers utilizes writer and director Jim Jarmusch’s affinity for vignettes over conventional long-form narratives to great effect.

The audience follows Bill Murray’s depressed and aging Lothario as they go on a road trip of past lovers to try and discover the validity of a claim of a long lost son and the collection of odd scenes with Jarmusch’s typically eclectic array of recognizable faces makes for a strange ride filled with near-indescribable emotions, all of which are channeled perfectly through one of Murray’s most beautiful and internalized movie performances ever.

3 Stray Dog (1949)

Akira Kurosawa has no shortage of masterpieces attached to his name, which have each become icons of popular culture the world over as well as integral pillars of the art of filmmaking itself, yet this brilliant cop thriller remains in an inexplicable state of relative obscurity compared to so many of his other collaborations with star Toshiro Mifune.

Stacked with post-war guilt and boiling over with frantic tension, Stray Dog sees Mifune’s rookie cop lose his gun during a particularly hot summer in Tokyo and the desperate search to find it serves as an engaging noir plot by itself but is really a backdrop for an emotional examination of a city, and a people, ravaged by conflict.

2 Snake Eyes (1998)

Perhaps the only American director who could match Argento’s claim to the dark side of Hitchcock’s legacy, Brian De Palma is known for a number of iconic movies despite somewhat falling out of style in the 21st century.

Though rarely championed as such, his final film of the 20th century is arguably one of his greatest and is certainly one of his most underappreciated. The cinematography alone in Snake Eyes is enough to dazzle a movie fan when taking into account the coordination and specificity involved in the construction of its long takes, some of which involve huge crowds of extras. Though it may not sound it, the story–which follows Nicolas Cage’s dirty cop as they’re thrust into the middle of a political assassination at a major boxing event–is surely its most conventional element and was perhaps just too old hat by the late 90s. But that’s no excuse for ignoring De Palma’s mastery of the camera and Cage’s unbridled energy as a performer.

1 Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014)

Diao Yinan’s neo-noir detective story follows a thoroughly washed-up former cop as they fall into the pull of a mysterious femme fatale figure who lies at the center of several disappearances, one of which remains one of his unsolved cases.

Sparse and emotionally ice cold, the writer/director’s calling card decision to use almost entirely diegetic sound, coupled with Jingsong Dong’s often achingly beautiful cinematography, only heightens the audience’s awareness of the world that the story takes place in and sucks them deep into the characters’ many problems in this rich portrait of life in modern China.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/obscure-underrated-detective-mystery-murder-movies-masterpieces/