The Best Crime Drama Films of 2022

It's a true testament to the diversity of all art that crime is a genre in itself. A tough one to decipher, yes, but just as delicious. When in the right hands, it truly comes to life as we either revel in the pleasures of bodies being chopped or get into the investigation of an incident of abuse, all seen and heard before but done with ample conviction.

This was a fairly better year for crime cinema than the last two. More importantly, it showed how solid filmmakers have learned to crack the code of a fictional thriller through the key of a true-crime narrative. Although there were many films that worked, I have compiled my five favourites. 

Special mentions to the solid Hindi films Gangubai Kathiawadi, Chup, and Monica O My Darling, the pulpy vigilante exploitation drama Saani Kaayidham, and the deliciously campy black comedies Windfall and Emily the Criminal. Also notable is the gripping Netflix true crime thriller The Good Nurse, featuring two of the most excellent performances in a mainstream serial killer drama in recent memory. 

5. Holy Spider 

Following his weird bodily Scandinavian noir Border, Ali Abbasi takes the true story of the serial killer who used to kill sex workers in the holy city of Mashhad and crafts a chilling and potent film around his ways, leading up to his eventual death sentence. 

While incredibly unsubtle and mainstream in its ways, the film still works well because it is sincere in its storytelling. More importantly, Zar Amir Ibrahimi's leading performance is pitch-perfect. She relies on the constant vulnerability and repression of her femininity to contain her terrific feminism. 

4. The Stranger 

Australian director Thomas M. Wright truly proves his ability to craft a dark, brooding and ominous atmosphere with The Stranger. A criminal procedural as it is, the film sincerely doubles up to become an intoxicating psychological drama and a direct investigation of mental instability. 

It is the extraordinary talent displayed by Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris that ends up making it the intense and uncomfortable film that it is. Both of them show their humanity and humour with such vigorous strength that one is bound to feel that the lines between the right and the wrong person have blurred. 

3. The Batman 

It usually happens that a good superhero film often stumbles at becoming the other films it is supposed to embody at the same time. A well-made superhero caper, for example, might as well be a mediocre comedy, or a stagey and pretentious moral science lesson hand-in-hand. 

This is where Matt Reeves's update on the origin-story of our favourite man in black works better than the recent attempts in the genre by the studio, and feels closer to The Dark Knight trilogy and even more so, to the David Fincher features such as Seven and Zodiac. It's all kinds of sensational and pulpy, but also all kinds of mature and strong. The noir looks are served in lavish proportions. 

2. Pada 

Perhaps the most important Indian film of the year, Kamal KM truly revises the shoddy language of Indian true-crime thriller depictions with Pada. There's an odd pleasure to be had watching these six men taking the DC of Kerala's Palakkad hostage, as they did in the year 1996.

It's an important and dynamic political story about fighting for one's rights by all means. However, while doing this, it isn't too heavy or self-serious. Rather, it owns its stylistic flourishes and amusing temperament time and again, before arriving at the hard-hitting pre-credits footage. The performances by the six actors, and the supporting ones, are great. 

1. Decision to Leave 

Talking about Decision to Leave is basically talking about my favourite film of the year so far. So, without much deliberation on how uniquely and brilliantly it fares as a swooning romance, we will talk about its brooding and gripping nature as a crime narrative, a detective drama of proportions. 

Being frequently subversive and upending the tropes of a femme fatale from an English noir is the film's extraordinary heroine Seo-rae, tenderly deceiving the gentle and depressed detective that she loves but being frankly blunt and unsparing in her chilling conquests. However, so playful and mysterious are her ways that the campy, baroque fun is hardly missed. Also, what an intelligent and even moving use of technology, iPhones and split-screen monitors.