Andhadhun (2018)
Streaming on: Netflix
One of the most brilliant crime thrillers to emerge in recent years, Andhadhun has earned a well-deserved seat on many crime thriller lists. Here’s why: Writer-director Sriram Raghavan has a devilish mind and a deep, nerdy love for cinema. Both these traits come together to create a riotous neo-noir film, filled with morally ambiguous characters who lie, cheat and crash cars in the landscape of his unpredictable world. While its open ending set the internet ablaze at the time of its release, we love the film for its edge-of-the-seat thrills and a narrative that refuses to stop raising the stakes. In Raghavan’s universe, every action has at least two deadly reactions and nothing is as it seems. Also, the film has Tabu as a femme fatale, which is as good a reason as any to watch a film.
Snatch (2000)
Streaming on: BookMyShow Stream
Released a year after Ritchie’s hugely popular debut Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch is effectively the older film’s rowdier sibling. There is an ensemble cast, convoluted overlapping storylines and gory violence (there’s a drinking game here — one shot for each time a character throws a punch. You’ll be plastered in no time). There’s Brad Pitt sporting an indecipherable accent. There are characters with names like Franky Four Fingers, Gorgeous George and Bullet Tooth Tony. Dead bodies are chopped up and fed to pigs. All of this, when combined with a narrative that moves at breakneck speed, seems like an elaborate joke Ritchie seems to be playing on us. But that’s the charm. The plot can seem difficult to understand in one go, but Ritchie’s fandom would ask you to sit back, give it a re-watch and enjoy the stylistic flourishes.
In Bruges (2008)
Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video
Much like Martin McDonagh’s most recent The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), his debut feature film In Bruges has moments that are both touchingly sad and shockingly violent. The net result is a curiously human tale, granting its own meaning to the genre of a crime thriller. Take, for example, the pivotal scene that leads Dublin hitmen Ray (Colin Farell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) to hide out in the city of Bruges, in Belgium. Ray is ordered to kill a priest and he does so in a confessional stand, after confessing to the same priest what he’s about to do. Soon after, he accidentally kills a small boy and reads the notes the boy had made for his own confession. Here Farell does his signature confused-eyebrows thing, brilliantly injecting humour into an otherwise dark scene. Most of In Bruges plays out as a comical conflict between not knowing whether one should laugh or cry. Yes, it’s a crime thriller but McDonagh graces it with guilt, friendship and laugh-out-loud humour.