5 Top Neo-Noir Films

During the post-World War II malaise of the 1940s and 1950s, moviegoers were riveted by a new form of cinematic entertainment -- grim, gritty, gray tales in which antiheroes navigated a murky world where they were considered the good guys only because everybody else was so bad: film noir, so called for both its literal and figurative tones.

Though the Cold War soon overshadowed the memory of the hot one that had just been waged, and nihilism gave way to a new neurosis based on mutual assured destruction, noir has a way of sticking close like a heat-packing thug tailing you down a rain-soaked city street. Here are some of the best films of that undying genre that postdate its heyday, one from each of the subsequent decades.

Point Blank (1967)

This early effort by director John Boorman stars Lee Marvin as a double-crossed hitman who, despite betrayal by his partner and his wife alike, leaves a trail of destruction not for the sake of vengeance but just because he wants his cut. How noir is that? The title is apt, because we don't go inside stone-faced Walker's mind -- it's all slick and superficial, like the Lost Angeles backdrop. But this is John Boorman, so just forget what I said. Marvin comes across like a 20th-century version of Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name: tight-lipped, alert, spare but sudden in his movements, and with more acting talent in his eyes than many other movie stars have in their entire bodies.

Chinatown (1974)

Before Jack Nicholson became, you know, Jack Nicholson, he created an indelible portrayal of a two-bit private eye in over his head with a convoluted mystery involving a twisted family -- shades of the seamy Sternwood clan in Raymond Chandler's equally complex tale "The Big Sleep" (the film version of which starred noir king Humphrey Bogart). Faye Dunaway performs femme fatale duties, and John Huston -- director of the proto-noir classic "The Maltese Falcon" -- costars the perverse patriarch. Roman Polanksi's direction of Robert Towne's script doesn't leave anyone unscathed.

Body Heat (1981)

Lawrence Kasdan's smoldering screen pairing of William Hurt as the befuddled fall guy and Kathleen Turner as the foxy femme fatale was a blast from the past, taking place in sultry, modern-day Florida but built like vintage, ice-cold Lalaland noir. In the midst of a debilitating heat wave, rich bitch Matty Walker ensnares mediocre lawyer Ned Racine in a plot to murder her husband -- a scheme that involves a forged will, false identity, and a rigged explosion. Director/writer Lawrence Kasdan's homage to the 1944 classic "Double Indemnity" is a firecracker of a film in its own right.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

None of the three protagonist policemen in director Curtis Hanson's period piece (based on a novel by noir novelist James Ellroy) are particularly appealing: Bud White (Russell Crowe) is the chief's loose-cannon muscle, aloof and overly ambitious Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) rubs people the wrong way, and Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), consultant for a "Dragnet"-type TV show, shines with oily charm. But when each of them fingers a different piece of a police-corruption puzzle, the decency deep inside them rises to the top and they tentatively team up to set things right. Crowe, whose character's belligerence gets a doctor's note, fares best, but the other leads -- and James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, and David Strathairn (and don't forget hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Kim Basinger) -- are all right on the money. This is the kind of film you don't want to end.

Brick (2005)

High school meets hardboiled? This film polarized audiences because of what some viewers and reviewers carelessly characterized as a "Beverly Hills 90210" take on noir. But this is no glossy beautiful-people soap opera. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt packs a lot of presence into his frail frame as a teenage loner who infiltrates a drug gang in his seaside suburb to avenge the death of his ex-girlfriend. The sun is shining, but the dialogue, the characters, and the atmosphere are brooding and bilious. The supporting cast -- headed by Lukas Haas as the Pin, the batlike druglord; Noah Fleiss as the tenderhearted bruiser, Tug; and Matt O'Leary as the Brain, our hero's bespectacled human database; plus Richard Roundtree in a cameo as the school vice principal (a stand-in for a genre standby, the gruff top cop) -- is fully committed to director/writer Rian Johnson's quirky vision.