Since the golden age of cinema, mystery thrillers have represented some of Hollywood's finest writing and filmmaking, relying on character development and complex stories rather than spectacle alone. Many of the best have come and gone, struggling for relevance beyond the year they were released, leaving behind a growing list of forgotten gems that deserve far more attention than they ever received. Here are five mystery movies that are worth seeking out.
'The Long Goodbye' (1973)
Elliott Gould plays Raymond Chandler's hardboiled detective Philip Marlowe, a private eye investigating the apparent murder of his friend while simultaneously taking a case involving a missing husband, only for the two cases to collide in ways that suggest everyone around him knows considerably more than they are letting on. The film revels in its own convolution, demanding maximum attention and rewarding it generously, crafting a mystery within a mystery that brings out everything that makes Marlowe one of fiction's greatest detectives. It is a slower-paced film that never had the benefit of a rising action star to carry it into the cultural conversation, and has slipped into relative obscurity for every generation since.
'Bad Day at Black Rock' (1955)
Set a few years after the Second World War, the film follows John J. Macreedy as he arrives at the desert village of Black Rock in search of a man named Komoko, only to find a community so hostile to his questions that attempts on his life begin almost immediately, pointing to a dark and deeply suppressed town secret. It is a perfect neo-Western thriller that uses the trauma of war and xenophobic paranoia to tell a morality play about what happens to a community when violence and resentment are allowed to masquerade as patriotism. Its message is as sharp and relevant now as it was when it was made.
'The Pledge' (2001)
Jack Nicholson plays Jerry Black, a detective who on the day of his retirement makes a promise to the mother of a young victim to find the person responsible, even as the authorities close the case convinced they already have their man. The film refuses to give viewers the sense of closure that most thrillers trade in, leaving its audience feeling frustrated and saddened in a way that is entirely intentional and entirely effective. Despite featuring some of Nicholson's finest work, that brand of unflinching deconstruction was simply not what audiences were looking for in the early 2000s, and the film has been largely overlooked ever since.
'The Parallax View' (1974)
The film begins with a botched assassination attempt and follows a reporter who, three years later, finds himself drawn into a conspiratorial investigation after witnesses to the incident begin turning up in suspicious circumstances one by one. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, the man behind 'All the President's Men', it is a film that drives its hero to the very edge of what he can understand about the world and takes the viewer along with him on every step of that unsettling journey. It was naturally overshadowed by bigger releases of an era that was throwing one crime masterpiece after another at audiences, and has never quite received the recognition it deserves.
'Brick' (2005)
A high school student named Brendan Frye follows a series of cryptic clues from an ex-girlfriend that lead him to a crime scene, prompting him to take the investigation into his own hands and slip deeper into his town's criminal underworld until he finds himself on the wrong side of a drug operation he barely understands. Directed by Rian Johnson, who would go on to redefine the mystery genre with the 'Knives Out' franchise, 'Brick' is the film that showed exactly what he was capable of two decades before the world caught up with him. It is the greatest neo-noir story that most crime fans have never seen and one of the most original mystery films ever made.
