The turn of the page. The rising levels of suspense. There is nothing like a crime story to keep one glued to a book.
With The Snowman coming to our movie screens, based on the phenomenally popular Harry Hole novels by Jo Nesbo, and with Michael Fassbender taking the lead role, Set The Tape looks back at five of the best movies that have taken inspiration from the best of the printed page that has dealt with murder, suspense and crime. Beginning with…
The Silence of the Lambs
In some ways, one of two crime novel adaptations that all others aspire to, becoming a massive box office hit and winning the five main Academy Awards, The Silence of the Lambs stands as a great thriller, as well as a masterful combination of suspense and horror. Based on Thomas Harris’s novel, part of a series that has also included Red Dragon, itself adapted into Michael Mann’s superb Manhunter, as well as the Brett Ratner film of the same name, The Silence of the Lambs has entered the pop cultural lexicon, with imagery and dialogue that has been spoofed and quoted affectionately.
Jodie Foster’s portrayal of Clarice Starling is so engaging that it’s no surprise she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Along with Anthony Hopkins’s iconic portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, the film has lost none of its power. It is brilliantly helped by Ted Tally’s screenplay and the late Jonathan Demme’s masterful direction, putting you into the characters head space with his superb use of point of view shots where many of the characters deliver their dialogue direct to camera.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Adapted twice, once in its native Sweden and then in the inevitable American remake, remarkably both versions are fantastic, but perhaps somewhat controversially, I’m picking the incredibly cinematic David Fincher version. Whilst the original does have an amazing Noomi Rapace performance at the heart of it, Fincher brings his usual brand of grand visual style to his adaptation, as well as a screenplay courtesy of Steven Zaillian.
Whilst other critics will probably declare the Swedish version as the better film, the novel suits itself to an American adaptation; although amazingly Fincher keeps the film set in Sweden and has his cast play with subtle Swedish accents. It would be easy to regard the film being made with such decisions as redundant when there is already a Swedish version out there, but when a film is as good as this one is, how can you fault it? With one of the greatest credit sequences ever put to film (imagine David Lynch directing James Bond credits) as well as superb central performances from Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, Fincher and Zallian bring Stieg Larsson’s phenomenally popular book to the screen in a stunning manner.
Amazingly, the film doesn’t pull its punches when it come to the novel’s more brutal moments, and makes for a compulsive watch. Sadly the middling box office has meant that Fincher-directed versions of the book’s sequels are very unlikely to happen.
L.A. Confidential
Adapted from James Ellroy’s novel, L.A. Confidential is a masterful call back to many a film noir of the 1940’s, complete with a complex narrative, brutish masculine detectives and glamorous femme fatale.
Directed by the late Curtis Hanson, with a screenplay by both Hansen and Brian Helgeland and a cast including then-unknowns Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce (unless you were a fan of Australian soap operas), alongside Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, James Cromwell and Danny DeVito, the movie is a superb adaptation based on the works of one of the great crime novelists and is a superbly crafted slice of adult entertainment, managing to bring the complexities of Ellroy’s storytelling and the superbly crafted dialogue to the screen in a way no other Ellroy adaptation has managed. It is so easy to come undone with work like this, as seen when the usually masterful Brian De Palma adapted Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia.
Gone Girl
David Fincher, again, adapting a best selling crime novel, again. Gone Girl is a superbly crafted adult thriller, the type of which Hollywood seldom seems to produce in this day and age. Gillian Flynn’s novel was a massive bestseller and Fincher brings the complex he said/she said narrative to the screen in the way only he can. Cast to perfection and featuring a career best performance from Rosamund Pike, the film brings the feel of the novel to the screen perfectly, helped no doubt by a screenplay by the novel’s writer, Gillian Flynn.
Being a Fincher film, it has all the hallmarks you expect; the sepia/orange tinted lighting, a superb Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score, uncompromising R-rated sequences, and a command of the material that feels like the work of a genuine filmmaking master. Flynn adapts her own book superbly, making it work brilliantly as a film, taking out superfluous elements of the novel, but without compromising what made her own book so good in the first place; and in the end you’re left with another masterful thriller from one of the greatest filmmakers working today.
The Godfather
Literally the Godfather of crime novel adaptations, Francis Ford Coppola took Mario Puzo’s potboiler about the Corleone crime family and turned it into something approaching art. Regarded by many, rightfully, as the greatest movie ever made, The Godfather has become so much a part of the fabric of the legacy of cinema that sometimes its hard to believe that it hasn’t been around forever.
Taking a pulpy bestseller and turning it into a masterpiece, The Godfather was expected to follow suit and be a respectable, but still pulpy film. Not with Coppola involved. Taking a massive risk on his casting choices, Pacino and Brando were vehemently not wanted by Paramount Picture, but Coppola stuck to his guns and the film has entered the lexicon of both high culture and pop culture. Leave the gun. Bring the cannoli.
Got a favourite that we’ve overlooked? Let us know in the comments section below.