Miller's Crossing gives the best example of the "ethics" of the crime film genre -- beginning as it does with the classic speech delivered by Giovanni Gasparo: "I'm talkin' about friendship -- I'm talkin' about character -- I'm talkin' about -- hell, Leo, I ain't embarrassed to use the word: I'm talkin' about ethics…" The film, of course, is full of characters whose actions are shady and unethical -- but
A professor of English at Waynesburg College, Roberts may have glossed over some of the raw and even vulgar remarks and actions taken by the characters. At one point a newspaper editor -- angered by the violence and killing conducted by Tony's gang of gangster beer purveyors -- blurts out, "We need to put teeth in the deportation act! These gangsters don't belong in this country" (Scarface, Hawk). Throughout the
Crime in Literature and Film "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris and "Manhunter" by Michael Mann The original version of the novel red dragon was written by Thomas Harris in 1981. In the words of Vest, only few authors have risen to the level of relevance and success as Thomas Harris, who authored just five novels, beginning from 1975. The Red Dragon, with other fictional works in the same series, is a famous
Cain (afterward coupled by Mickey Spillane, Horace McCoy, and Jim Thompson) -- whose books were also recurrently tailored in films noir. In the vein of the novels, these films were set apart by a subdued atmosphere and realistic violence, and they presented postwar American cynicism to the extent of nihilism by presuming the total and hopeless corruption of society and of everyone in it. Billy Wilder's acidic Double Indemnity
In Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the selfishness seems even more chilling. Henry's murder spree starts with the death of two prostitutes, and it is the lack of significance that Henry gives to those murders that is startling. It would probably be freeing to lose that connection to people, to be in a position where human life means nothing. However, it would also be alien and frightening. That
In the heist itself, time overlaps, and actions that have already been shown are repeated from another character's point-of-view. The audience is left to pout the pieces together so that we see a character do something and then se how it helps the next action lead to the desired conclusion. At the racetrack, with the announcement of the start of the fifth race, the film cuts to Johnny, in the