Crime Movies Bucket List

A structural engineer has the prison's blueprints tattooed over his body and gets himself sent inside to break his brother out.

Arthur Fleck on trial from Arkham with Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel, told as a jukebox musical; the lowest CinemaScore ever given a comic-book film.

Small-time swindlers dress as priests to rob peasants, and one of them tires of it.

Fincher's Lisbeth Salander, with a Reznor score and the coldest Sweden on film.

A hitman's routine, his mistakes and his internal monologue, to the Smiths.

A woman released after thirteen years for a murder she did not commit collects her debts.

A triad and his reckless little brother; Wong's first film, and the most conventional.

A former ballplayer in 1990s New York is handed a cat and the wrong people's problem.

A gangster forces a student into prostitution and watches her through a mirror.

The feature cut of Dekalog 5: a murder and an execution, shot through green filters; it helped end the Polish death penalty.

Omar Sy as a gentleman thief in Paris inspired by the Arsene Lupin books; the Louvre heist.

A Mumbai policeman and a gangster's prophecy of the city's end; India's first Netflix original.

Sarah Lund and her jumper hunt a killer over twenty days; the original Forbrydelsen.

A detective in the Weimar Berlin of 1929; Germany's most expensive series.

A body on the Oresund bridge, half in Sweden and half in Denmark; Saga Noren.

Colin Farrell under prosthetics rises through Gotham's underworld after The Batman.

Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez solve murders in their Upper West Side building.

Mads Mikkelsen cooks for Will Graham; the most beautiful horror on network television.

A 13-year-old arrested for murder, four episodes each in a single take; the British series of 2025.

A US marshal in his Kentucky home county and Boyd Crowder; Elmore Leonard on TV.

Nucky Thompson runs Atlantic City in Prohibition; Scorsese directed the pilot.

Kate Winslet as a Pennsylvania detective in a town she cannot leave; the hoagie and the accent.

A financial adviser launders cartel money at a Missouri lake; Jason Bateman and Laura Linney.

The Professor and his Dali-masked crew inside the Royal Mint of Spain; "Bella Ciao".

The Shelby gang in 1920s Birmingham with razor blades in their caps; Cillian Murphy.

A maximum-security prison in Emerald City; HBO's first drama and the model for everything after.

A Miami forensics analyst who kills killers; the first four seasons.

A motorcycle club in California as Hamlet; Charlie Hunnam and Katey Sagal.

Benedict Cumberbatch in modern London; the Reichenbach fall and the internet.

Peter Falk's rumpled detective, "just one more thing", with the murderer shown first.