Deconstructing the machinery of cinema.
Villain, a Japanese drama directed by Lee Sang-il, is a curious experience. It's about the murder of a young woman along a country road, although its focus is very much on those still-living who are affected by her death. At no point is the identity of the killer ever in doubt, indeed we spent the ...
A police officer in a northern Chinese city is the sole survivor of a horrifying shoot-out that leaves both criminals and his fellow officers dead. Five years later, he is an alcoholic security guard. A former colleague drags him back into the fold when his last police case, long thought closed, suddenly swings open with ...
Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson) is a former police detective turned insurance salesman. Each day he takes the Hudson line into New York City and back again, sharing his train with a familiar group of fellow passengers. One day Michael is unexpectedly laid off from his employer. On the way home, he is approached on the ...
Security consultant David Dunn (Bruce Willis) secretly boasts super-strength and is close to indestructible, and patrols the streets of Philadelphia in a hooded raincoat. When he tracks down serial killer Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) - a man with several competing personalities, one of which is a deranged killer known as the Beast with similar ...
Yu Guowei (Duhan Yihong) is a security guard working in a rain-soaked industrial town in 1997. When a serial killer begins murdering local woman, Yu's independent investigation becomes a personal obsession. It threatens his position at the factory where he works, as well as a growing relationship with sex worker-turned-hairdresser Yanzi (Jiang Yiyan). The Looming Storm, produced ...
In the near future, the American economy has collapsed to the point where the freshly elected "New Founding Fathers of America" enact a social experiment: seal off New York's Staten Island for 24 hours, during which time all crimes become legal. For the impoverished citizens of the island, each of whom is paid $5,000 to ...
Two Kentucky university students devise a plan to rob the college library, drawing several of their friends to assist in the heist. An encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood crime thrillers cannot, however, prepare them for the real thing. American Animals, a crime film written and directed by Bart Layton, freely adapts a real-life attempted university heist ...
