Since the golden age of Hollywood, mystery films of all shapes and sizes have consistently held audience attention and admiration. Even today, stories of unwinding labyrinth conspiracies and complicated webs have proven to create critical and box office success. Many of these thrillers unfold as a slow burn. Numerous classic films spend time drip feeding information to the audience and characters, carefully placing tinder and kindling before, eventually lighting the match. Other mysteries burn hot and heavy right from the start.
Audiences love Knives Out‘s Benoit Blanc as much as they love Jack Reacher, and, indeed, many of the best mystery films combine complicated, thought-out plots with heart-racing, crowd-pleasing action. Viewers love to watch films where dominoes are carefully set up, and where building blocks are carefully placed…but everyone knows that the real fun comes in knocking them down.
11 ‘The Girl Who with the Dragon Tattoo’ (2011)
Directed by David Fincher
The mystery genre has a long history of pulling from the best of literature and David Fincher’s The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo is no different. Based on the best-selling Stieg Larson novel, this thriller places Rooney Mara alongside Daniel Craig as they each become entangled in a complicated web of disappearances, cover-ups, and a string of post-war murders. Mara’s Lisabeth Slander and Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist are non-traditional protagonists but compelling ones with their own secrets and motivations.
Under Fincher’s direction, the film holds a grim and ponderous atmosphere, and when the action enters the film, it holds this tone. Violence is shown as rough and barbaric and its cast of brilliant actors, including Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright, and Stellan Skarsgård, portray every struggle with grit and realism. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo presents violence not as flashy but as the brutal, damaging consequences of one’s own actions. A theme the upcoming television adaptation looks to explore as well.
10 ‘North By Northwest’ (1959)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Through works like Rope and Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock showcased his ability to seamlessly build tension out of patience and quiet. North By Northwest shows that he also knows when to get loud. The classic thriller kicks off when an ad executive played by old Hollywood stalwart Cary Grant is framed for murder. What follows is an accelerating stream of adventures and close calls as this unlikely hero must evade capture, clear his name, and uncover the real truth behind the conspiracy he has been swept up in.
North By Northwest features action set-pieces and mystery thrills so iconic and genre defining that they are known even by those who have never seen the films. The sequence of grant evading a crop-duster armed in a cornfield is one of the most recognizable in film history and yet is able to maintain its impact despite releasing over 65 years ago. This is owed to Hitchcock’s timeless and innovative direction, which makes every chase scene, every punch, and every conceivable glimpse of danger in North By Northwest as heart-pounding and intense as the day it first released.
9 ‘Blade Runner 2049’ (2017)
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Blade Runner 2049 is the critically acclaimed, Oscar-winning sequel to the original cyberpunk classic. Set in a dystopian future full of human-like androids called replicants, the film follows Ryan Gosling as Agent K, a detective with mysterious memories that may alter all of humanity – and replicants. Set against the backdrop of a stunning, futuristic Los Angeles, Agent K retraces the path of the original film’s mysterious Detective Deckard (Harrison Ford) and crosses paths with a colorful cast including; Dave Bautita, Ana de Armas, Jared Leto and more.
Science fiction master, Denis Villeneuve gives 2049”s action a larger sense of scale and creativity than the original Blade Runner, without sacrificing any of the emotional character-driven focus that made the original a classic to begin with. The film’s use of color, cinematography, and sound elevate its action pieces and turns each shootout into a series of striking and memorable portraits. Blade Runner 2049 is the rare sequel that improves upon its predecessor and comes loaded with enough mystery and action to entertain any audience.
8 ‘The Nice Guys’ (2016)
Directed by Shane Black
After writing and directing buddy cop classics like Lethal Weapon, and Kiss Bang Bang, Shane Black created The Nice Guys as his ultimate love letter to the genre. This action comedy stars a pair of unlikely detectives in Ryan Gosling and Russel Crowe, who must partner up when they are both contracted to solve the same murder. The duo is stuck together as the mystery quickly deepens and things spiral more and more out of control.
Black is a master of the action genre and weaves Gosling and Crowe seamlessly through action, comedy, mystery, and enough drama to make the audience care about all of the above. The amazing chemistry between the two leads drives this thriller forward, and they are assisted in both witty banter and action by the likes of Matt Bomer, Keith David, and scene-stealer Angourie Rice. Though a sequel seems unlikely, The Nice Guys has slowly gained cult status over the past few years due to its critically acclaimed action comedy and ability to simultaneously satirize and homage the detective movie genre.
7 ‘Minority Report’ (2002)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Mysteries typically revolve around finding a culprit, Minority Report flips this on its head and presents a sci-fi future world where the ‘who’ of any crime is known before the crime itself. Tom Cruise stars in this mind-bending thriller as “pre-crime” detective Jon Anderton, who must go on the run when it is predicted that he will soon kill a man that he has never even met. Directed by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg, the film’s futuristic setting allows for inventive action, including futuristic vehicles, jetpacks, and battles through automated factories and environments.
Cruise is known for death defying stunts and, when paired with Spielberg’s masterful direction, these stunts hit harder than ever. Spielberg is renowned for his talent at mixing digital and practical effects and his creativity shines in this near futuristic setting. The team up of one of the millennium’s greatest movie stars and Spielberg creates compelling drama and action. Minority Report juggles the act of presenting eye-opening commentary on what the justice system is, and what it could become, while still remembering to be a crowd-pleasing adventure,
6 ‘Mission Impossible’ (1996)
Directed by Brian De Palma
Espionage and mysteries go hand in hand, and no franchise has shown that better in recent years than the Mission Impossible series. Tom Cruise’s first outing, as Ethan Hunt, sees the agent labeled as a traitor by his own Impossible Missions Force (I.M.F.) after his entire team is killed in a sabotaged mission. For the first of many times in the Mission Impossible series, Hunt goes rogue to clear his name and uncover the real culprits behind the supposed deaths of his team.
While the later Mission Impossible films become more traditional globe-trotting adventures, the 1996 original holds strong onto a level of espionage intrigue without sacrificing the bombastic action that defines the series. Director Brian De Palma digs into the series’ roots as a Cold War-era TV show and presents Ethan Hunt as equally adept at the subtle aspects of spy craft as he is at the physical feats. Mission Impossible frequently switches between the subtle and the heart-pounding, and while Cruise would go onto perform some outlandish sequences in the series, the first film’s CIA heist is still one of the franchise’s best. Some films want their government conspiracies unraveled, others want an exploding train. Mission Impossible proudly lays claim to both.
5 ‘LA Confidential’ (1997)
Directed by Curtis Hanson
A true detective movie, LA Confidential weaves a complicated tale of corruption, deceit, and greed within the 1950s LA police department. The film features Kevin Spacey, and star-making turns by Guy Pearce and Russel Crowe as three men on varying sides of the police department’s corruption. Through these intersecting and competing perspectives, LA Confidential features an Oscar award-winning story and what may be the quintessential noir detective mystery.
The film compliments its intricate, finely crafted mystery, with frequent bouts of violent and visceral action. In contrast to the glitz and glamour of 1950s Hollywood, the shootouts in LA Confidential are bloody, painful, and loud, creating one of the most brutally honest depictions of Los Angeles ever put to film. The highlight of these set-pieces is the film’s climactic scene at the victory motel, where several of the movie’s threads fold together into what is widely considered one of the greatest cinematic shootouts of all time.
Rent On Prime Video
4 ‘The Batman’ (2022)
Directed by Matt Reeves
Batman has had many titles over the eighty years of his existence: The Prince of Gotham, The Caped Crusader, The Dark Knight. With its noir take on Gotham City, and its cat and mouse thriller style, The Batman is the first film to live up to the character’s title of World’s Greatest Detective. Robert Pattinson portrays an early Batman, facing his first confrontation with several members of his burgeoning rogues gallery, including Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), The Penguin (Colin Farrell), and the taunting serial killer, The Riddler (Paul Dano). The Batman is driven by Dano’s creepy and unsettling reinvention of the classic Batman villain, providing a nemesis for The Dark Knight capable of presenting both mental and physical challenges in the hero’s path.
And indeed, despite its main villain’s brains over brawn nature, The Batman sees some of the superhero’s most faithful and compelling action scenes to date. This includes a thrilling car chase with The Penguin and a desperate attempt to save a flooded Gotham from The Riddler’s machinations. For 80 years, Batman stories have combined gripping crime fiction with superhero set-pieces, and in its mastery of both these elements, The Batman presents one of the most fully realized versions of the titular character to date.
3 ‘Oldboy’ (2003)
Directed by Park Chan-wook
2
Oldboy features such memorable and extreme action scenes that it often overshadows the films’ nature as an intense and thought-provoking drama. The film’s iconic hallway fight scene, in which the protagonist takes on a legion of enemies in a single unbroken shot, has become one of the most recognizable and acclaimed action sequences of the new millennium, and is far from the film’s only jaw-dropping set-piece.
The film stars Choi Min-sik as Oh Dae-su, who, upon exiting prison, is immediately thrust into an intense conspiracy and a convoluted tale of guilt, betrayal, and the consequences of revenge. Visionary director Park Chan-wook explores these themes in depth, which leaves an impression on the audience that lasts for long after the film has ended. Oldboy is often cited as not just an amazing mystery movie, but one of the greatest movies of all time.
1 ‘The Bourne Identity’ (2002)
Directed by Doug Liman
The most compelling mysteries often evolve from the most basic starting points, and The Bourne Identity is a prime example. In this adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel, a man awakes only knowing his name and quickly finds that his identity is at the very center of one of the world’s most imminent and dangerous conspiracies. Matt Damon stars as the titular Jason Bourne in the role that launched him to superstardom, and with the movie’s rapid-fire pacing, intense drama, and decade-defining action, it is easy to see why.
Jason Bourne’s quest to unravel his own memories and history revitalized the action genre when it was released in 2002 and its intimate, resourceful, and efficient, shaky cam action created a blockbuster sensation that at time felt like nothing else. Director Doug Liman eschews the concept of stylized, suave hit men and presents the Bourne universe as full of hyperefficient, pragmatic killers. This hardcore, visceral action set a tone for a new generation of blockbusters where action heroes were closer to real soldiers than superheroes and where audiences tensed up at every punch, gunshot, and car crash. While Jason Bourne would go on to many, endlessly rewatchable adventures, the original stands tall as a relentlessly compelling action mystery.
