For as long as HBO has been a brand, it’s been associated, at least in part, with crime dramas. Everything from True Detective: Night Country to The Sopranos to The Wire has emerged from the network, and all those drama series live on Max now.
In addition to all of the great drama series on Max, though, the streaming service is also home to one of the deepest selections of crime movies you could ask for. There are plenty of great original titles that you can check out, as well as a deep library of movies that were wildly acclaimed during their initial runs in theaters. Here are three of the very best crime dramas on Max for you to check out:
No Sudden Move (2021)
Steven Soderbergh may be the greatest master of the crime movie working today, and No Sudden Move is one of his best efforts. Set in Detroit in the 1950s, the movie follows a trio of small-time thieves hired to steal a document, only to have their heist go horribly wrong. In the aftermath, they attempt to figure out who hired them and what’s in the document they’ve been made to steal.
Featuring great central performances from Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro, as well as a roster of outstanding supporting actors, No Sudden Move is thrilling from start to finish and also pretty difficult to predict.
A Most Violent Year (2014)
A great underseen thriller about the owner of an oil business who is trying as hard as he can to prove that he is not as corrupt as everyone around him, A Most Violent Year is one of the most slept-on movies of recent years. Thanks to two titanic performances from Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, the movie feels ripped right out of an era when these kinds of movies were common.
What makes the movie work, though, is the way it so thoroughly examines a system that forces a good man to do brutal things in order to stay in business. He wants to be better but exists in a world where being better means losing everything.
Killing Them Softly (2012)
A brutal crime thriller that is really about the 2008 recession, Killing Them Softly is one of the best movies of the 2010s and is criminally underseen. The movie is ostensibly about the aftermath of a card game that was ripped off by two low-level crooks, but at its root, it’s a movie about systemic rot and the inability of a single person to change anything.
Brad Pitt (Bullet Train) has never been better than he is here as a ruthless killer who kills not for revenge but because he’s paid to do so. Everything is a transaction in Killing Them Softly, even if some of the movie’s characters wish things could be different.
