HOWZAT

A forerunner of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, Joseph H. Lewis’s tale of love on the run is a delirious pleasure with an exquisitely shot bank heist, an erotic love affair with guns and a femme fatale straight out of the devil’s handbook.

H is for Dashiell Hammett

The only crime writer whose life has also been filmed as a thriller (by Wim Wenders), the author of The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man has generally been well served by the movies, although his masterpiece Red Harvest has so far defied attempts to adapt it.

I is for I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

A gritty jail-break film that paved the way for modern cult classics such as Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, and injected a strong sense of moral conscience into the Hollywood pot, this was directed by Mervyn LeRoy, who had created Little Caesar in 1931.

J is for Jack the Ripper

Another crime icon, albeit of an evil nature, who can’t be kept away from the silver screen. From Hitchcock’s The Lodger to the more recent From Hell, with Johnny Depp, the Whitechapel serial killer has always cut a more dashing image in films than many worthy sleuths themselves.

K is for The Killing (1956)

An adaptation of a Lionel White novel by Stanley Kubrick, this race heist thriller has seldom been improved on in depicting the meticulous work that is the business of crime and the subtle interactions between criminals under pressure.

L is for Liebestraum (1991)

Mike Figgis’s much underrated thriller about steel buildings, sexual jealousy, family secrets and the wheels of fate is a highly personal choice. But the force of obsession is a theme that draws me in.

M is for Miller’s Crossing (1990)

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