Crime Genres
There are lots of different types of crime films. A lot of crime films cross over into other genres, which then become harder to find conventions for. The three main types of crime films are the ‘Gangster’, ‘Detective’ and the ‘Film Noir’.
The gangster film would usually contain a ‘criminal/villain', lots of gangsters, guns, business men and money. Usually the film would be about the police or another gang chasing or fighting other top business men and their 'mobs'. It may also feature woman as girlfriends, strippers or victims, however they would not be the normal house wife type of woman. The story is usually told in the criminals view and follows his/her life.
I analysed the poster of True Romance, a film I have watched which ticks all the boxes for a gangster film. It involves the stripper female, the guns, the money and the chase.
Another type would be the detective, which to me is
rather boring as it’s a whole two hours of the police trying to chase and capture a criminal. It would usually feature such things as car-chase's, police stations, and your Sherlock- Holmes type of character. The story would be through the views of the goodies, and the
criminal would be the baddies. The closest film I have watched to a
detective film would be Star-sky and Hutch, which is a comedy
version of a detective, also known as a spoof. This contained all the things I thought a detective film would have, the police, the car
chase and the two main characters were the goodies trying to find the baddies.
The noir is the last of the types. It’s the oldest of the three and
started back in the 1940's - 1950s. It’s the typical Hollywood film. It’s
the hardest to find conventions for as it overlaps into other genres to make its own genre. This name ‘Noir’ came from the word ‘black’ in
French, which shows us that the films are dark and eerie. They came after the World War Two, where the world was a dark place and the films were dark themed and the contents were dark too. They were often action films and usually low budget.
Some people may see ‘To kill a mockingbird’ as a noir as it dates back to the decade after the noir came out. It has a dark theme to it as its racist and full of depression.
The crime genre is aimed mainly at men. A few of the newer gangster crime films are aimed at the teenage males,
such as Greenstreet or Football factory which features football hooliganism which hasn’t been seen as a crime for too many years.
A lot of the actors in these ‘hooligan’ films are young males however
in other crime films such as ‘The Usual Suspect’s or ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ would be aimed at the middle-aged to older male.
This is because of the content in the film and the crimes in which they feature in the film.
