If you hear the words ‘private detective’, it’s pretty certain that a particular movie stereotype comes to mind: a man in a run-down office in a film noir, wearing a slightly shabby suit and a worn fedora, perpetually smoking a cigarette and nursing a glass of liquor, eyeing a femme fatale in a pencil skirt with great gams and lined stockings.
The reason all that comes to mind is that there are a bunch of really great movies perpetuating that stereotype. And those classics made this list, but we’re also including the great private detective movies that deviated from that standard and gave us detectives with a difference.
From Poirot to Marlowe, to Sam Spade and everyone in between, these are the 20 best private detective movies of all time.
20The Big Sleep (1946)
Humphrey Bogart is one of many actors to play Raymond Chandler’s famous private eye, Phillip Marlowe, and he was one of the best (seeThe Long Goodbye, below). This 1946 adaptation of Chandler’s novel (it was filmed again in the ’70s with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe, a role he first played inFarewell, My Lovely) paired Bogart with Lauren Bacall as Marlowe investigates a case that begins with blackmail involving a wealthy Los Angeles man’s daughter (Bacall’s sister) but soon leads to gambling, kidnapping, and murder. Most critics agree that the plot is a little confusing, and there are differences of opinion over the original 1945 cut and a shorter version released a year later, but both versions cement Bogey as the quintessential film noir P.I.
Related:Humphrey Bogart’s Best Movies, Ranked
19Murder by Death (1976)
The 1976 parody film is a send-up of Agatha Christie-style novels, and a star-studded affair. It’s a slightly more adult version ofClue, with five private detectives and their companions invited to a mysterious country house for the weekend, by someone named Lionel Twain (Truman Capote). Each detective is modeled on a fictional one: Maggie Smith and David Niven after Nick and Nora Charles ofThin Manfame, Peter Sellers as Charlie Chan, Peter Falk as Sam Spade, Elsa Lanchester as Miss Marple, and James Coco as Hercule Poirot. Alec Guinness plays a blind butler to Nancy Walker’s deaf cook, and every actor is at their comedic best, playing up the silliest stereotypes of the most famous private detective novels.
18Night Moves (1975)
There’s something about the hot and sticky south that works exquisitely for private detective movies, andNight Movesgives us Gene Hackman as the somewhat washed-up Harry Mosley, an LA P.I. hired to find the 16-year-old daughter of a washed-up actress who needs her daughter’s trust fund to get by. Mosley follows the trail of the daughter, Delly (Melanie Griffith), down to the Florida Keys, and family ties get murky as Delly seems to be romancing her mother’s former lovers, and Mosley to boot. It’s a drunken, humid movie with Hackman’s Mosley hopelessly out of his death, plunging ahead anyways.
17Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Ben Affleck directed his brother Casey as Patrick Kenzie, a Boston private detective who, along with his partner/girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan), are hired to find the missing four-year-old daughter of a drug-addicted single mother, Helene (Amy Ryan). Morgan Freeman plays the sympathetic Captain Doyle, who previously lost his own daughter. The case is mishandled, with the child assumed drowned, and Doyle retires, but with the disappearance of another child months later, it becomes clear that the case is not over, and things are even darker than they seemed. Kenzie is so determined to follow the letter of the law that he ends up struggling to do what is right.
16Knives Out (2019)
Rian Johnson’s smash-hit mystery is a family whodunit: who killed wealthy Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer)? Private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) turns up, hired by persons unknown to investigate the family, every member of which seems to have a motive, like in all the best Agatha Christie novels. With a cast including such luminaries as Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, and Toni Colette, it would have been easy for Blanc to have been a side character, but Craig imbues the detective with a sly Southern charm that makes him the star of the show, both in this film and its sequel,Glass Onion.
Related:How Knives Out Turned Daniel Craig into the Anti-James Bond
15Sisters (1972)
Charles Durning takes on the detective role as Joseph Larch in Brian De Palma’s twisted 1972 horror film. He’s hired by a reporter named Grace (Jennifer Salt), who suspects foul play in a neighboring apartment. The neighbor, Danielle (Margot Kidder), indeed was involved with the killing of a blind date, which she covers up due to the murderer being her twin sister, Dominique (also Kidder). Through the course of investigation, it turns out that Danielle and Dominique were born conjoined, but also, mysteriously, that Dominique apparently died during their recent separation. That’s just the beginning of the plot twists that Larch and Grace encounter as they race to find Dominique before she kills again.
14Blood Simple (1984)
The Coen brothers’debut feature still holds up as one of their very best, starring Frances McDormand as Abby, a married woman having an affair with her husband’s bartender employee, Ray (John Getz). Abby’s husband Julian (Dan Hedaya) hires P.I. Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to get him proof of the relationship. The scene quickly turns violent, and Julian instructs Visser to kill the couple, which Visser pretends to do, presenting doctored photos and collecting the promised cash before shooting Julian. The grim and gritty movie was a revelation from a duo with no prior filmmaking experience, and Walsh is especially menacing as the amoral investigator. (Walsh plays a much more light-hearted private investigator inThe Jerk, albeit one who first tries to kill Steve Martin.)
Carl Reiner and Steve Martin were a dream team for this 1982 neo-noir collage film, simultaneously honoring and spoofing detective films of the ’40s. The plot centers around P.I. Rigby Reardon (Martin), who has been hired by Julie Forrest (Rachel Ward) to find her cheesemaking scientist father. Archival footage has been spliced in, so Martin and others are trading lines with the likes of such noir stalwarts as Humphrey Bogart (The Big Sleep,Dark Passage,In a Lonely Place), Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number), Joan Crawford (Humoresque), Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend), and many more. The comedy was also notable for being the last film worked on by legendary costumer Edith Head.
12The Mole Agent (2020)
Probably the least traditional P.I. film on this list,The Mole Agentis a charming, touching Chilean documentary in which a private investigator has been hired to check out a nursing home, as his client suspects her mother might be suffering abuse at the hands of the staff. The investigator outsources the job to an elderly man named Sergio, who moves into the home to carry out investigations (scenes where the detective is conducting job interviews for the role are delightful), becoming friends with the other residents in the process. Sergio is quickly beloved by all, especially the ladies, and the movie becomes more about these tender connections and the way the elderly are treated than the investigation (although he still carries out his duties).
11The Long Goodbye (1973)
Robert Altman directed Elliott Gould asRaymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowein this 1973 adaptation, shifting the setting to ’70s Hollywood. Marlowe is dealing with the mysterious suicide of a friend when he’s hired to find a woman’s missing novelist husband, which soon leads him back to his friend’s suicide. The friend was also suspected of killing his wife, which doesn’t sit right with Marlowe, and for good reason. The two couples seem to have been involved in some way, and figuring out how is the key to everything, although he is confronted with lies at every turn. Gould’s Marlowe is a huge departure from the Marlowe of the novels and previous films, and Chandler purists will be disappointed, but fans of Gould and Altman consider the film a huge success.
