The film you watch at 2am when sleep has given up on you should earn your full attention without demanding you pay for it the next morning.
In retrospect, the 2010s were a decade of quiet excellence - films doing serious work without demanding credit for it.
The best crime films understand that most criminals aren't monsters. They're people who made a series of choices.
Police officer Asger Holm, demoted to desk work as an alarm dispatcher, answers a call from a panicked woman who claims to have been kidnapped. Confined to the police station and with the phone as his only tool, Asger races against time to get help and find her.
A divorced dad and his ex-con brother resort to a desperate scheme in order to save their family's farm in West Texas.
A gangster known as "Samurai" wants to turn the waterfront of Rome into a new Las Vegas. All the local mob bosses have agreed to work for this common goal. But peace is not to last long.
McCall believes he has put his mysterious past behind him and dedicated himself to beginning a new, quiet life. But when he meets Teri, a young girl under the control of ultra-violent Russian gangsters, he can't stand idly by - he has to help her. Armed with hidden skills that allow him to serve vengeance against anyone who would brutalize the helpless, McCall comes out of his self-imposed retirement and finds his desire for justice reawakened. If someone has a problem, if the odds are stacked against them, if they have nowhere else to turn, McCall will help. He is The Equalizer.
Gru is a supervillain determined to prove he's the greatest by stealing the Moon. To pull off his plan, he adopts three orphaned girls-Margo, Edith, and Agnes-intending to use them as part of his scheme. However, as Gru bonds with the girls, his cold, villainous exterior begins to melt.
The crime films worth your time are the ones where the moral calculus is genuinely complicated. Not every villain is a monster. Not every hero is clean.
A wealthy playboy named Bruce Wayne and a Chicago cop named Jim Gordon both return to Gotham City where their lives unexpectedly intersect.
An accomplished headhunter risks everything to obtain a valuable painting owned by a former mercenary.
Former cop Brian O'Conner partners with ex-con Dom Toretto on the opposite side of the law. Since Brian and Mia Toretto broke Dom out of custody, they've blown across many borders to elude authorities. Now backed into a corner in Rio de Janeiro, they must pull one last job in order to gain their freedom.
Damian Wayne is having a hard time coping with his father's "no killing" rule. Meanwhile, Gotham is going through hell with threats such as the insane Dollmaker, and the secretive Court of Owls.
Doug MacRay is a longtime thief, who, smarter than the rest of his crew, is looking for his chance to exit the game. When a bank job leads to the group kidnapping an attractive branch manager, he takes on the role of monitoring her - but their burgeoning relationship threatens to unveil the identities of Doug and his crew to the FBI Agent who is on their case.
Not every highly-rated film deserves its rating. These do. Watch them without expectations and see what you think.
The best crime films stay with you because they refuse to let you feel entirely comfortable about who you were rooting for.