Amid all of the (fairly justified) hype surrounding the breakout of True Detective earlier this year, people need to be reminded of where shows like that found their roots. The shows creator Nic Pizzolatto didnt amass his knowledge of the crime genre through marathons of The Bill on ITV 2 and the occasional episode of Traffic Cops. No the influence on the classics of crime film are evident in HBOs smash-hit show, and its not hard to understand why. At its core, film as a medium is loved by people the world over as it gives us a chance to escape from our comfortable, mundane, ordinary lives for 2-hours and enter the world of a group of characters wed never normally encounter. Generally speaking, for the vast portion of cinema-goers there isnt much further you can get away from a mundane life than to that of a criminal (other than by watching James Cameron's Avatar). These immoral individuals will resort to violence, lies and betrayal to achieve their means and will more-often-than-not still manage to win us over and have us cheering them on by the time the end-credits roll. This is the power of cinema in action in the streets wed never sympathise with these rogues but in the comfort of a cinema seat we can learn to love them. Since the boom of cinema as a major form of entertainment in the 1940s crime films have ever been some of the finest the medium has had to offer. Here are 10 of the greatest...
Hailing from South East London, Sam Heard is an aspiring writer and recent graduate from the University of Warwick. Sam's favourite things include energy drinks, late nights spent watching the UFC with his girlfriend and annihilating his friends at FIFA.
