114 Best Crime Dramas Movies to Watch (Page 8)

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106. Bad Education, 2023

With its wildly different shifts between the film’s chapters, Bad Education feels like it doesn’t know what to do with itself, like plenty of newly graduated teenagers. The first chapter holds such visceral revulsion that it first feels like it would be a serious cautionary tale, commenting on how, without guidance, teenagers will led each other astray. However, its next chapter takes a more comedic route as the kids try to escape from gangsters and the police. While director Kai Ko reveals an excellent sense of direction and imagery, his style feels like it’s been wasted on ill-thought intentions and a poorly written script. Bad Education at least has stunning visuals and a short runtime to get through it all.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Actor: Berant Zhu, Cheng Chih-wei, Edison Song, Hong Yu Hong, Huang Hsin-Yao, Kai Ko, Kent Tsai, Kurt Hsiao, Leon Dai, McFly Wu, Ning Chang, Tzu-Chiang Wang

Director: Kai Ko

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107. Parish, 2024

	
Parish bears striking resemblance to Netflix's Kaleidoscope. It follows the same premise of a financially struggling protagonist getting back in the life of crime they had once abandoned, and they even cast the same lead actor in Giarcarlo Esposito. But the similarities end there. No other character is as magnetic as the lead role, making the show light on onscreen chemistry, delivering tension like a middle of the road soap opera. It has a singular stroke of genius, which is the accomplishment of casting Esposito, who is a big enough draw by himself. Beyond that, the writing itself is hollow, the episodes drag 10 minutes too long, and there's no drama you can get here that you can't get anywhere else.Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Arica Himmel, Bonnie Mbuli, Dax Rey, Giancarlo Esposito, Ivan Mbakop, Paula Malcomson, Skeet Ulrich, Zackary Momoh
Rating: TV-14

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108. Iron Reign, 2024

	
Iron Reign isn’t downright terrible. It has the usual stakes of a crime series– tough guys, guns, and cargo that the gang wants to sell, while the cops want to stop– and right off the gate, there are decent gunfight sequences between gangs that are fun to watch. However, even with a great production, and a unique portside location, the characters of Iron Reign start off as the most generic versions of themselves. Manchado rules the port, but we don’t get to know his mindset, what drives him, or anything that would motivate him, whereas Victor seems determined to bring him down only because it’s his real job as a police infiltrator. The betrayals and double-dealing later on start making the drama feel more interesting, but Iron Reign’s introductions falter in making the characters seem interesting.Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Ana Torrent, Chino Darín, Cosimo Fusco, Daniel Grao, Eduard Fernandez, Enric Auquer, Giannina Fruttero, Jaime Lorente, Melina Matthews, Natalia de Molina, Raúl Briones, Roberto Mateos, Salva Reina, Sergi Lopez
Rating: TV-MA

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109. Deliver Me, 2024

We don’t like to think about it, but there are children around the world recruited into organized crime, and sometimes, it leads to violent tragedies, the very kind we want to protect our children from. Deliver Me is a Swedish miniseries based on the best-selling novel of the same name that explores how a teen delinquent enters this vicious world. The series starts with the aftermath of an attempted murder– with Dogge holding a gun in his hands and his best friend Billy bleeding out in front of him. The cops in charge, led by Farid, hope to help him, by gaining more information about the gang they were recruited into, but it’s not an easy investigation. It’s depressing, especially when Dogge is so convinced he’d get off scot-free, and the issue is clearly important. But it also doesn’t stand out, as the series pulls off the same Netflix flair we’re already used to.

Genre: Drama, Mystery

Actor: Ane Dahl Torp, Ardalan Esmaili, Henrik Norlen, Jhullian Carlsson, Mahmut Suvakci, Yusra Warsama

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110. Saindhav, 2024

	
There have been plenty of excellent films that tackle plenty of themes all at once, but Saindhav feels like a bunch of unrelated ideas strung together as an excuse for cool action set pieces. We’re first presented with the idea that violent video games are being used to recruit children for terrorist groups, but in response to this is a pretty violent protagonist that does over-the-top killings complete with explosions. His justification is that he’s doing it for money for his sick daughter, whose treatment is exorbitantly expensive. Both of these ideas should be discussed, and the cast tries to make the best of it, but Saindhav just combines these ideas to justify the glorified violence they’re supposedly critiquing.Genre: Action, Crime
Actor: Andrea Jeremiah, Arya, Baby Sara, Getup Srinu, Jayaprakash, Jisshu Sengupta, Mukesh Rishi, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ramajogayya Sastry, Ravi Varma, Ruhani Sharma, Sailesh Kolanu, Shraddha Srinath, Venkatesh
Director: Sailesh Kolanu

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111. Pulimada, 2023

There’s something frightening about being consistently spurned due to circumstances out of your control. This is the main concern of Pulimada’s Vincent, since he’s not marriage material due to his family’s history of mental illness. The twisty plot is reminiscent of old gothic mysteries, complete with a tiger metaphor, but the execution is off, especially since it takes more than two thirds of the film before there’s anything to fear. It’s clear that Pulimada has an engaging, though dated concept, and Joju George’s transformation for Vincent could have definitely gotten there. But entering this tiger’s den feels like a letdown when there’s no risk, no style, no intrigue in the film’s approach.

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Actor: Abu Salim, Aishwarya Rajesh, Balachandra Menon, Chemban Vinod Jose, Dileesh Nair, Jaffer Idukki, Jeo Baby, Johny Antony, Joju George, Krishna Prabha, Lijomol Jose

Director: A K Sajan

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112. Art of Love, 2024

	
With stunning art, an exciting heist, and a steamy romance between a good girl detective and bad boy billionaire, Art of Love could have leaned into the sleek and campy tension of the original 2005 Mr. & Mrs. Smith. There’s some of it here, with the investigation bringing up her previous, sensual memories of the romance that was, and Esra Bilgiç and Birkan Sokullu looking so, so gorgeous dressed in the most stylish outfits. But the film mostly plays out in generic Netflix fashion, with the characters replaying dated clichés, and not actually dealing with the emotional betrayal that should have marked Güney’s abandonment. Art of Love is at least beautiful to look at.Genre: Action, Drama, Romance
Actor: Birkan Sokullu, Esra Bilgiç, Fırat Tanış, Hakan Ummak, Nil Keser, Osman Alkaş, Ushan Cakir
Director: Recai Karagöz
Rating: PG-13

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113. Blood Coast, 2023

When France is portrayed on the silver screen, we’re more used to seeing the nation’s capital, Paris. Netflix instead takes us to the coastline of Marseilles in crime thriller series Blood Coast. As the Marseilles police team, led by police officer Lyès Benamar, hunts down the people behind the drugs, Interpol agent Alice Vadal gets transferred from Paris to the coastal case, possibly for revenge for her father. It’s a familiar plot, and the crime thriller goes through the motions in a slow, but predictable fashion, alternating between the police team and the organized syndicate behind the foreign drugs flooding the coast. The resulting show feels a tad boring, though it’s thankfully limited to only six episodes.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Crime

Actor: Idir Azougli, Jeanne Goursaud, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Olivier Barthélémy, Tewfik Jallab

Director: Ivan Fegyveres, Olivier Marchal

Rating: TV-MA

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114. Fool Me Once, 2024

In a world of constant surveillance– CCTV, mass-market trackers, social media– it would seem that it’s not possible to create a murder mystery that wouldn’t be easily solved by just checking the tapes. Fool Me Once proves that it’s possible to do so, it just won’t be satisfying. The series at first seems to have an unexplainable mystery, with a possible resurrection/fake death of Maya’s husband, but the series throws away certain footage (like the CCTV during Joe’s death, or the hospital he was brought to) only to bring back the technology when convenient. The show does keep certain tidbits from us, but for far too long, and without giving smaller clues that would hopefully piece together the whole mystery. And with eight whole episodes that drag out the plot, Fool Me Once seems to have fooled us into thinking that it would have all been worth it in the end.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery

Actor: Adeel Akhtar, Emmett Scanlan, Joanna Lumley, Michelle Keegan, Richard Armitage

Rating: TV-MA

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