As Amanda Schurr said in her intro to our list of the 100 best film noirs, “Noir is a state of mind, of subconscious, a fever dream, an existential crisis.” While Netflix may be sorely lacking in its film history, especially lately as studio-specific streamers have decided to retain the rights to their long and storied filmographies, there are still movies in its library that bring to life the fever dreams imagined by their creators. Netflix’s self-selected section of film noir contains many films that are questionably noir—hell, they’re questionably neo-noir, quasi-noir, or noir-lite—but in between the seemingly random dramas and Netflix Originals, there are a few gems that offer up some of the hallmarks of that stark and shadowy cinematic mindset. You can check out our list of the Best Movies on Netflix or simply pour yourself a scotch and settle into one of these fine films.
Here are the seven best film noirs streaming on Netflix, using Netflix’s very loosely defined category:
1. The IrishmanYear: 2019
Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Jesse Plemons, Anna Paquin
Rating: R
Peggy Sheeran (Lucy Gallina) watches her father, Frank (Robert De Niro), through a door left ajar as he packs his suitcase for a work trip in this 2019 Martin Scorsese film and Netflix’s best original movie. In go trousers and shirts, each neatly tucked and folded against the luggage’s interior. In goes the snubnose revolver, the ruthless tool of Frank’s trade. He doesn’t know his daughter’s eyes are on him; she’s constitutionally quiet, and remains so throughout most of their interaction as adults. He shuts the case. She disappears behind the door. Her judgment lingers. The scene plays out one third of the way into The Irishman, named for Frank’s mob world sobriquet, and replays in its final shot, as Frank, old, decrepit and utterly, hopelessly alone, abandoned by his family and bereft of his gangster friends through the passage of time, sits on his nursing home bed. Maybe he’s waiting for Death, but most likely he’s waiting for Peggy (played as an adult by Anna Paquin), who disowned him and has no intention of forgiving him his sins. Peggy serves as Scorsese’s moral arbiter. She’s a harsh judge: The film takes a dim view of machismo as couched in the realm of mafiosa and mugs. When Scorsese’s principal characters aren’t scheming or paying off schemes in acts of violence, they’re throwing temper tantrums, eating ice cream or in an extreme case slap-fighting in a desperately pathetic throwdown. This scene echoes similarly pitiful scenes in Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel and Rashomon: brawls between wannabe roughs afraid of brawling, but forced into it by their own bravado. The Irishman spans the 1950s to the early 2000s, the years Frank worked for the Bufalino crime family, led by Russell (Joe Pesci, out of retirement and intimidating). “Working” means murdering some people, muscling others, even blowing up a car or a building when the occasion warrants. When disengaged from gangland terrorism, he’s at home reading the paper, watching the news, dragging Peggy to the local grocer to give him a beatdown for shoving her. “I only did what you should,” the poor doomed bastard says before Frank drags him out to the street and crushes his hand on the curb. The Irishman is historical nonfiction, chronicling Sheeran’s life, and through his life the lives of the Bufalinos and their associates, particularly those who died before their time (that being most of them). It’s also a portrait of childhood cast in the shadow of dispassionate brutality, and what a young girl must do to find safety in a world defined by bloodshed. —Andy Crump
2. The DepartedYear: 2006
Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga
Rating: R
At times truly funny and at others brutally violent, Martin Scorsese’s ambitious gangster flick spends equal time exploring the deceitful inner workings of the Boston Special Investigation Unit and it’s pro-crime counterpart, the Frank Costello-led Irish mafia. The director’s first gangster film to be set in Boston won him his first Best Picture Award at the Oscars. Featuring an all-star cast in the likes of Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson, the gangster drama, a remake of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, upholds the optimum qualities of a classic Scorsese picture: style, morality and grit.—David Roark
3. HeatYear: 1995
Director: Michael Mann
Stars: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer
Rating: R
Those first watching Michael Mann’s L.A. crime masterpiece should view it with a clean slate—and from then on dissect it in great detail, with all of its separate elements pulled apart to determine how they eventually came together to complete such an intricately constructed work of storytelling. Anything in between would seldom do this sprawling (yet taut) epic justice. Exploring the concept of the cop and the robber on opposite sides of the same coin is a premise that pretty much every crime drama has delved into in one way or another, yet Mann manages to create the dichotomy’s epitome. By implementing, with surgical precision, an impressively pure vision of a grand, boastful and larger-than-life crime story, Mann delivers a culmination of his previously tight, deliberately stylized work (namely, Thief and Manhunter). With its hauntingly cold cinematography, moody score, terrific performances by a slew of legendary stars and character actors (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer) and—let’s not forget—the mother of all cinematic shoot-outs in its center, it more than likely represents the peak of Mann’s ever-shifting career. —Oktay Ege Kozak
4. Reservoir DogsYear: 1992
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Edward Bunker, Quentin Tarantino
Rating: R
Reservoir Dogs’ debut at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival launched not only the career of one Quentin Tarantino but an American indie genre unto itself characterized by extreme violence, profane dialogue, nonlinear storytelling and a curated soundtrack. Many have tried, but none of his imitators has achieved the visual and aural poetry at work in Tarantino’s oeuvre, particularly his magnum opus Pulp Fiction, upon whose release in 1994 newly minted fans went back to discover the aftermath of Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown, Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink and Mr. White’s botched diamond heist (but not the heist itself). This is where it all began. —Annlee Ellingson
5. Night in ParadiseYear: 2021
Director: Park Hoon-jung
Stars: Uhm Tae-goo, Jeon Yeo-been, Cha Seung-won, Park Ho-san
Writer/director Park Hoon-jung’s sixth feature, Night in Paradise, posits that revenge is a dish best served raw. Characters feast on mulhoe—spicy raw seafood soup served chilled—a delicacy that elicits childhood memories and reminiscences of pleasurable meals shared with family members who have since died at the violent whims of spiteful gangsters. Instead of acting as a point of catharsis, these recollections fuel a fruitless pursuit for vengeance. After his terminally ill sister and her child become the latest targets of the Bukseong gang, professional hitman and rival Yang gang member Tae-gu (Uhm Tae-goo) attempts to settle the score by ambushing the culprits he believes responsible for their murder. With the ruthless Chief Ma (Cha Seung-won) mobilizing the entire Bukseong faction to catch and kill Tae-gu, he is ushered off to Jeju Island where he will stay with an assassin-turned-arms-dealer before permanently relocating to Russia. In lieu of personally fetching Tae-gu upon his arrival, the old man sends his young but ailing niece Jae-yeon (Jeon Yeo-been) to chauffeur the fugitive back to their island abode. Not one to mince words or feign politeness, Jae-yeon is initially contemptuous towards Tae-gu and resents her uncle’s participation in his escape. Her own past has seen relatives needlessly sacrificed in the name of gang rivalry, a point that inadvertently allows the two would-be adversaries to bond over their incalculable loss—as well as, of course, their shared love of mulhoe. While the visual and thematic richness of Night in Paradise could adequately carry the film on their own, the wry comedic tone that often infiltrates even the darkest exchanges between characters enhances the overall emotional payoff. This is particularly true of Jae-yeon and Chief Ma, who—despite having death as an omnipresent specter in their lives—manage to contribute nonchalant levity, whether that be after a near death experience or while overseeing orchestrated assassinations. Park’s careful attention to multifaceted and often intersecting sentiments keeps the viewer consistently enthralled in the narrative web he weaves, an undeniable boon for a two-hour-plus film. Night in Paradise is most incisive in these complex moments of bitter ambiguity. It would be impossible and ineffective to attempt to aptly deduce the most morally correct way to overcome a rabid desire to avenge those who have been unjustly ripped away from this mortal coil. Park lingers in the burning rawness of these compulsions. Whether the viewer finds the piquant discomfort alluring or is ultimately left soured by the ordeal is merely a matter of palate.—Natalia Keogan
6. MankYear: 2020
Director: David Fincher
Stars: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Tom Pelphrey, Charles Dance
Rating: R
To talk about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz is to talk about Citizen Kane, which is to say it’s to talk about power, money, fulfillment, and success. And if you’re director David Fincher, to make a movie about Mankiewicz is to make a movie like Citizen Kane. A would-be insider epic held up by reference-heavy repartee and painted with all the aesthetics of the revolutionary movie, really this is a movie for Fincher to flex his film history—an earlier, more serious Hail, Caesar! with Orson Welles in the laurels and Mankiewicz on the cross. Netflix’s Mank might not nearly live up to its subject’s crowning achievement, but it’s still a dense and enjoyable cinematic rant that would make its central lout proud. At first, much of the film seems to rest on Gary Oldman’s performance as Mank, the rapscallion whose wit, writing, and refusal to stay sober ingratiated him with and infuriated so many. Possessing the standard writer’s one-two combo of alcoholism and self-loathing, Mank heads towards social and physical self-destruction. Thankfully—since Oldman’s creaky groan and wobble don’t belie much warmth, and his one-liners needed another draft before drawing the kind of (even mean-spirited) adoration the movie tells us they do—the movie quickly becomes the story of the shifting industry and political climate around ‘30s Hollywood during Mank’s time conceptualizing, then writing Citizen Kane. At times self-effacing and others completely self-involved, with an idealistic core and cynical view on Hollywood, Mank is a lot like its sloppy hero—likable enough, but capable of so much more.—Jacob Oller
7. Donnie BrascoYear: 1997
Director: Mike Newell
Stars: Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, James Russo, Anne Heche
Rating: R
Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco innovated the gangster movie, mishmashing it with the undercover cop movie and focusing on a less-famous crime family, the Bonannos, one of the mafia’s Five Families of New York City in the 1970s. In the lead role, Johnny Depp delivers a prevailing performance, hashing out a moral dilemma as the undercover Donnie Brasco. —David Roark