Directed by George Armitage • 1990 • United States
Starring Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward
Based on the novel by crack crime writer Charles Willeford and produced by Jonathan Demme, this marvelously offbeat, black-comic caper features a totally unhinged performance from Alec Baldwin as sociopathic ex-con Frederick J. Frenger Jr., a.k.a. Junior, who, immediately upon being released from prison, books it to Miami, inadvertently kills a man in the airport, and hooks up with Susie Waggoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a sweetly naive sex worker who longs for domestic stability. When he gets ahold of a badge and gun (plus a set of false teeth) belonging to Detective Hoke Moseley (Fred Ward), Junior embarks on a wild crime spree posing as a police officer—with the grizzled Moseley in dogged pursuit.
Up Next in Noir
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Demonlover
Directed by Olivier Assayas • 2002 • France
Starring Connie Nielsen, Charles Berling, Chloë Sevigny“No one sees anything. Ever. They watch, but they don’t understand.” So observes Connie Nielsen in Olivier Assayas’s hallucinatory, globe-spanning DEMONLOVER, a postmodern neonoir thriller and med...
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Body Heat
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan • 1981 • United States
Starring William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard CrennaWilliam Hurt and Kathleen Turner strike sparks in this taut, South Florida–set tale of lust, greed, and murder that echoes 1940s film noir but is charged with a steamy passion that could onl...
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Lost Highway
Directed by David Lynch • 1997 • United States
Starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” A mesmerizing meditation on the mysterious nature of identity, LOST HIGHWAY, David Lynch’s seventh feature film, is one of the filmmaker’s most potent cinemati...