There are few streaming services with a deeper lineup of great movies to watch than Max. Whatever you’re looking for, you’re almost guaranteed to find at least a few options on the streaming service, and that’s especially true for crime dramas. Every streamer has at least a few crime dramas. After all, it’s been a staple of movie-making for as long as movies have been around.
Max, though, has so many that it can actually be tough to pick one if you don’t already know what you’re looking for, which is, of course, where we come in. We’ve assembled three great Max crime dramas you should watch in April of 2024:
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
A modern-day samurai story, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai follows a contract killer who is swift and moves like a phantom. After pledging his life to a small-time mobster who saved his life years before, he kills whoever he’s told to out of a sense of honor and duty.
Ghost Dog may sound like an odd premise, but in the hands of Forest Whitaker and director Jim Jarmusch, the movie becomes a thoughtful examination of the codes a person keeps and of the ways in which they can be compromised in the face of harsher realities.
You can watch Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai on Max.
Bad Education (2020)
One of Hugh Jackman’s very best performances comes in this underseen drama that’s based on a true story. Bad Education tells the story of a superintendent and his deputy as they bring their district unprecedented levels of prestige. When a student reporter discovers what seems to be a massive embezzlement scheme, the superintendent goes to extraordinary lengths to cover the crime up, and to hide the life that he’s been leading outside of school.
Bad Education may not be about murder, but it is one of the most riveting true crime movies released in recent years.
You can watch Bad Education on Max.
Kimi (2022)
Steven Soderbergh’s era of small-budget thrillers reached something of a zenith with Kimi, which tells the story of a reclusive tech worker who suffers from agoraphobia and uncovers a crime through audio that she is listening to.
With a fierce central performance from The Batman 2‘s Zoe Kravitz, Kimi packs a major punch, and because it’s set in Seattle during COVID and is also about the state of modern technology, it feels painfully relevant even two years later. Kimi might be a little rough around the edges, but few directors know how to thrill their audiences as well as Soderbergh.
You can watch Kimi on Max.
