In 1941, the legendary director John Huston brought the first film to the big screen. not to go of Hollywood history. Starring Humphrey Bogart, it is a journey through New York, converted into a sinister and dangerous setting. More than that, it is a story about good and evil, amorality and cruelty. All in the midst of a sophisticated display of symbols that use cinematographic language to narrate a twisted crime.
The film was a critical and box office success. Furthermore, its popularity opened the doors to a genre that, throughout the history of the seventh art, has become increasingly relevant. The arguments that explore violence outside the law and the city as a brutal setting have become essential to understanding cinema. At the same time, when analyzing contemporary evil from a cynical angle. Which gives him a perverse conception of human behavior that became fundamental to understanding a certain type of cinema.
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We leave you five movies not to go that you can see right now on Star+. From a drug trafficker in search of redemption to a criminal who discovers that his worst enemy is among his trusted men. The compilation covers several of the best stories about criminal cruelty and at the same time, The way this allows us to understand our time and its darkest places in greater depth.
The last night
Spike Lee’s adaptation of the play The 25th Hour by David Benioff, has the same dark and pessimistic tone as the original. Furthermore, the director gave her a sense of tragedy that makes her entire story painful, despite its sordid nature. Especially when dissecting the world of crime New York in its multiple dimensions and hierarchies, in an almost elegant way.
Brogan (Edward Norton), is a small-time drug dealer, who lives his last hours before entering prison. For him, a 7-year sentence awaits him, which he may not survive and which will turn his life into an endless flight for the worse. So he uses the few hours he has left in freedom to analyze the biggest mistakes in his life and what he leaves behind once the bars close. A premise that gives the plot an air of total defeat from which the character cannot escape.
However, there is still a mystery to solve. Brogan He needs to understand how he got to that point and who betrayed him, turning him into cannon fodder for a criminal system that ignores him. The film reaches its best moments by telling in detail what is hidden in the adventures of the worst criminals. Likewise, his human part, devoured by greed and cruelty.
Delivery
This film by director Michaël R. Roskam analyzes revenge and crime from a small perspective. In its plot, although there is a criminal organization in the subtext, everything takes place between two streets in Brooklyn and a bar. Also, in the midst of an unusually domestic conflict.
Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) shares ownership of a small establishment with Marvin Stipler (James Gandolfini). Both deal with financial ups and downs and also with the siege of the Chechen mafia. But somehow they’ve managed to find a precarious balance between those things.
That is, until Bob finds an abused puppy and decides to adopt him. A seemingly trivial event that will trigger, almost by accident, a series of increasingly strange and dangerous situations. Little by little, Bob and Marvin will understand that the limits of crime are never subtle and that, in the end, violence always ends up being the criminal’s response. The unique moral of a slow-paced film that slowly reveals its secrets.
Road to Perdition
Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner, it is a dark and pessimistic look at evil. Also, a thoughtful reflection on crime, as an inevitable event in the lives of some men. Which allows the director, Sam Mendes, to create a meticulous epic of his dark characters’ fall from grace.
Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) has no choice but to kill, as a mercenary for an Irish gang in the middle of the Great Depression of the 1930s. His loyalty and coldness earned him the trust of John Rooney (Paul Newman), who considers him one of his children. But even affection can become a provocation — and in the end, a tragedy — in the criminal underworld. And that is precisely what will happen when Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig), John’s son, decides to kill Michael to separate him from a possible succession. He won’t make it. However, it will provoke relentless revenge that will end up devastating the clan to which it belongs.
With impeccable visuals and a slow pace that creates a painful atmosphere, the film is a rare gem in the Star+ catalog. Also, one of the best reinventions of the genre not to go of the last decades. However, its greatest attribute is turning revenge into a sophisticated reflection on fear and violence. Something that Mendes takes to another dimension in the brutal ending of the film.
The counselor
Currently, Ridley Scott is at the center of controversy due to the film Napoleon. But already in 2013, his vision of the criminal world, through a success story, sparked some discussions about the glorification of crime.
The counselor, starring Michael Fassbender (The Killer), tells how a successful lawyer discovers that it is much more profitable to be part of a drug trafficking network. What seems like an absurd — and even mocking — premise becomes increasingly strange and harsh, As his decision leads him to explore the worst of himself.
The film, although it begins promisingly, ends up being a narrative mess dotted with violence. However, the background of the plot remains the controversial vision of crime as a successful goal. Something that remains its most remembered point.
Death among the flowers
Ethan and Joel Coen have made a career out of cynically analyzing the different forms of crime. But it is, perhaps, in one of his least known films in which his sarcastic vision of the extremes of violence is most obvious. Death among flowers, analyzes loyalty among criminals. Beyond that, it delves into how real the possibility is that a criminal network can be sustained on more or less elementary codes of conduct.
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The premise, which might seem crazy, becomes a journey through violence. That, as the only link that survivors share to the rigors of organized crime. By its strange ending, the film showed that brutality and cruelty can also be a way of life. The hard lesson that the argument leaves in its wake.