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Crime Wave: The Filmgoers' Guide to the Great Crime Movies
One of Hollywood's most triumphant successes is the crime movie. Crime Wave offers an authoritative and entertaining guide to the crime movie genre from its beginnings to the present, charting its history, its sub-genres, and its developments. The book focuses on the most interesting and influential films, from Little Caesar, The Maltese Falcon, Point Blank, and The Godfather trilogy to L.A. Confidential, Ocean's Eleven , and many others.
Crime Wave covers gangster and heist movies, blaxploitation, noir, murder mystery, and vigilante and buddy cop movies. Hughes explores each film's sources and influences, its impact on the crime genre and current fashion, including spin-offs, copies and sequels, themes, style, and box office fortunes. Detailed cast lists are provided for each of the main films, as are biographies and filmographies of the key personnel, along with background details of the films' production, locations, and sets.Films featured include Dirty Harry, Once Upon a Time in America, Get Carter, Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, White Heat, GoodFellas, Lethal Weapon and Pulp Fiction.
Crime Wave covers gangster and heist movies, blaxploitation, noir, murder mystery, and vigilante and buddy cop movies. Hughes explores each film's sources and influences, its impact on the crime genre and current fashion, including spin-offs, copies and sequels, themes, style, and box office fortunes. Detailed cast lists are provided for each of the main films, as are biographies and filmographies of the key personnel, along with background details of the films' production, locations, and sets.Films featured include Dirty Harry, Once Upon a Time in America, Get Carter, Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, White Heat, GoodFellas, Lethal Weapon and Pulp Fiction.
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 24, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 16, 2017
Ugh, I can't finish this. I just quickly browsed through the rest of the articles, and it was all the same: random unfunny quips (what's Bogart's toupee got to do with anything?), unimportant trivia (yes, Mary Astor went through a humiliating divorce, but how's that relevant when dealing with The Maltese Falcon and its influence on the genre?), and severe lack of actually interesting information ("Also missing from the film version was the comma in the title." You're kidding!? Not sure if that was supposed to be a joke, though.).
Hughes promises detailed analyses and the tracing of the developments of the genre, but instead relies heavily on plot synopses and brief mentions of actor filmographies, both of which I would check from Wikipedia or IMDB if there was a need for that. The choice of films is a matter of taste, so I'm going to let that go. Overall I understand this is supposed to be an overview, but the lack of focus is distracting and renders the book shallow. Lists don't offer insight to anything, as was proved here.
Hughes promises detailed analyses and the tracing of the developments of the genre, but instead relies heavily on plot synopses and brief mentions of actor filmographies, both of which I would check from Wikipedia or IMDB if there was a need for that. The choice of films is a matter of taste, so I'm going to let that go. Overall I understand this is supposed to be an overview, but the lack of focus is distracting and renders the book shallow. Lists don't offer insight to anything, as was proved here.
July 13, 2009
If you're a fan of the genre, I highly recommend this book. Even if you've seen most of the films discusses in this book you'll discover something new in terms of facts about the movies you've seen and enjoyed or a new film to seek out.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews