Crime & Punishment
Explore this gripping selection of films packed with paranoia and conspiracy, with inescapably brilliant performances from some of Britain’s best loved stars, come and traverse the underside of British cinema.
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County Lines
Obeying the first rule – 'write what you know' - former youth worker turned filmmaker Henry Blake turns in an original, stylish debut feature which premiered at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival.
It exposes the urban-to-rural drugs system of the title, a network which exploits children to use as...
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The Ghoul
The Ghoul is an atmospheric slow-burn crime film more interested in psychology and the occult than in solving crimes. Tom Meeten’s detective Chris is called to investigate a mysterious, possible double murder. Discovering clues in the house of a shadowy suspect, he goes undercover as a patient to...
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Brighton Rock
Richard Attenborough is unforgettable as ‘Pinkie’, the brutal gangster who seduces and grooms a simple waitress, Rose (Carol Marsh) in the belief that she could incriminate him in a murder.
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Two Way Stretch
In Huntleigh prison, a group of cellmates (Peter Sellers, Bernard Cribbins and David Lodge) plan the perfect burglary. By escaping the day before their release, then breaking back in again, they will have the perfect alibi when they rob a maharajah's palace of its diamonds - they will seemingly n...
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The Wrong Arm of the Law
When London gangster “Pearly” Gates (Peter Sellers) discovers he has been swindled by a group of criminals impersonating police officers, he teams up with a detective to entrap them. Throw in a rival gang, a double-crossing girlfriend and much identity confusion, and you have a delightfully absur...
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An Inspector Calls
It is 1912, and the shadow of war looms over a wealthy family. As they celebrate their eldest daughter's engagement in their lavish Yorkshire manor, they're interrupted by an ominous police detective who is investigating a young woman's suicide, and what role each of them played in her death.
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The Mirror Crack'd
When a Hollywood movie company arrives, stars in tow, to make a picture, the village of St Mary Mead is delighted. However, when a local woman is murdered, and the poison seems to have been intended for a visiting movie star, local detective Inspector Craddock (Edward Fox) turns to his Auntie, Mi...
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Peeping Tom
Much criticised at the time of its release, Michael Powell’s psychological study of a shy camera technician who films for his home movies the death throes of the women he kills is now widely regarded as a dark classic. Less a straightforward serial-killer thriller than a Freudian meditation on ho...
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And Soon the Darkness
Two young English nurses, Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice) embark on a cycling holiday in the French countryside. They happen upon a mysterious man, Paul (Sandor Eles), who seems interested in them. Cathy is intrigued by the man, but suspicious Jane wants to continue on the jour...
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The Blue Lamp
Basil Dearden directs this classic cop thriller which gave rise to long-running TV drama Dixon of Dock Green and influenced a swathe of British crime dramas. Jack Warner is PS George Dixon, the steadfast bobby approaching retirement, who has to contend with a new breed of criminal in the form of ...
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It Always Rains on Sunday
The British New Wave came a decade earlier than advertised with Robert Hamer's downbeat postwar thriller. In a dank East End of ration-book misery, dosshouses and black marketeering, a world-weary housewife is shaken by the sudden reappearance of an old lover, now an escaped convict on the run. R...
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Sweeney!
Hard-bitten Flying Squad officer Jack Regan gets embroiled in a deadly political plot when an old friend asks him to investigate the death of his girlfriend. Framed on a drunk-drive charge and suspended from the force, with his partner and best mate George Carter unable to help, Jack must rely on...
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Murder!
Here, in one of Hitchcock’s few whodunits, even the actress accused of murder is unsure whether she’s guilty, having blacked out before being discovered with the weapon and a colleague’s corpse. Just one juror (Herbert Marshall) – a thesp himself – believes her innocent, and investigates. A fasci...
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Silent Scream
1963: When Larry Winters violently murders a Soho barman in cold blood he is sentenced to life imprisonment. Within ten years he is addicted to prescription drugs and feared as Scotland's most violent inmate. After being transferred to the experimental Barlinnie Special Unit, Winters finds new an...
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Recluse
Harrowing drama based on the true story of a murder and suicide that took place on the Luxton family farm in Devon in the 1970s. Sensitively handled by director Bob Bentley and superbly edited by the acclaimed David Gladwell, Recluse stars Maurice Denham and boasts fine naturalistic perfomances f...
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Repeater
Comic thriller influenced by the French New Wave which, with its unorthodox narrative about a woman's confession of murder, deconstructs the conventions of the thriller genre. Directed by Christopher Monger (Voice Over), who would go on to have a successful Hollywood career, Repeater was produced...
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Operation Third Form
In this favourite from the Children's Film Foundation, a fresh-faced John Moulder Brown (Deep End) gives a sparkling performance as the schoolboy out to foil a pair of North London crooks with his crack spy unit – his classmates and kid sister. With its groovy 1960s soundtrack, Operation Third Fo...
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Melancholia
The sole directorial credit by the German-born founder of distributor Artificial Eye, Andi Engel, is a cerebral thriller about an art critic drawn into an assassination plot. Jeroen Krabbe plays the German ex-pat who reconnects with his radical past when he's asked to assist with the hit of a Chi...
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Miss Robin Hood
In this delightful fantasy adventure a mild-mannered newspaper columnist (Richard Hearne) finds himself presented with an intriguing proposition from an elderly fan (Margaret Rutherford). She suggests that they conspire to steal a secret whiskey formula from ruthless distillers who themselves sto...
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Sweeney 2
Rough, tough Flying Squad officers Jack Regan (John Thaw) and George Carter (Dennis Waterman) are back, this time hunting a ruthless gang of bank robbers who use a gold-plated sawn-off shotgun during their raids. Following a trail of dead bodies, wrecked cars, and bundles of banknotes, the two de...
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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Legendary Hollywood director Sidney Lumet’s final film is as blistering as any young director’s. In desperate need of money, brothers Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke rob a ‘mom and pop’ jewelry store – only it belongs to their own mom and pop. Murder and time-tripping editing ensue; and Al...
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Drugstore Cowboy
Addicted husband and wife team, Bob and Diane Hughes (Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch) and a younger couple of thieves resort to robbing drugstores to stay high. Still in spite of this tragic lifestyle, they share moments of compassion and humor. The foursomes skillfully skirt the law due to Bob's wits ...
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Carlos
Adapted from a five-and-a-half-hour television miniseries, this three-hour biopic from acclaimed director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Personal Shopper) chronicles 20 years in the life of Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez aka Carlos the Jackal. Édgar Ramírez (The Bourne Ultimatum) star...