Noir, Noir where art thou!

Note: I wrote this a long time ago and am not changing it; its a bit dramatic and not entirely accurate - a writer who has reached his conclusion without really thinking of his argument. But I like what I wrote in 2011 and am holding on to it.

Crime noir can be explained in three words: edgy, sexy and fatalistic. No one is perfect and nothing goes according to plan. Good intentions be damned. Wise guys, hard boiled gumshoes, femme fatales  and corrupt cops are all going down so buckle up because its going to be one hell of a ride - down mean streets, past the prison, to a grave yard - if you are lucky. But the genre seems not to have the legs to make it it into the new century and like a few other genres (westerns, war movies) it has fallen out of favor with Hollywood.



Crime noir by which I mean movies dealing with tough talking gum shoes or bank heists has had a huge influence on narrative fiction, be it movies or literature. It's tone and style has been adopted by a number of practtioneers of story telling but the original template that these movies exploited are no longer in vogue. While the original plots could be played out only so many times, and change was inevitable it still doesn't explain the compete lack of hard boiled movies. If rom-coms can be made year after year then why not make a few movies that are nothing but edgy, sexy and fatalistic.


The seventies was the only time when such a reboot succeeded and produced three truly great movies: Chinatown, Long Kiss Goodbye and Night Moves. All three of these  not only recast the genre in new light but also added gravitas to it; they were a comment on their times and the times that came before it. All three detectives Jake Gittes, Phillip Marlow, Harry Moseby are hard nosed guys, confident, and upright. By the end of the movie all three will be revealed to have been out of their depths and only one will attain some type of closure. The fatalism is function of their own naivete; they are doomed to fail because they do not full understand what they have goten themselves into. This is not the noir of old, the tables have turned. The man who walks down the mean streets may think he knows what he is doing but he is out of his depths. This is the era of the Vietnam war.


The nineties did have two almost great noir movies. LA Confidential and Reservoir Dogs. However neither is in the vein of the noir of old. LA Confidential borrows most of the elements of the hard boiled detective story but it tries to be more than just a tale of greed and corruption. The lead characters are more modern so to speak in that they are dealing with inner demons but this kind of characterization eventually undermines the rawness that is usually associated with noir. It feels more a crime procedural, a love story, and a buddy movie than a film about deformed men and their greedy intents. Reservoir Dogs is a great movie but it is not great noir. It again has all the best elements of a heist noir: the plan, the crew, the screw up, the fatalistic ending. But these serve as frames which Tarantino uses to vault into tangents - enjoyable tangents but tangents nevertheless. The ending again is bathetic - characters weep - the grim realization that noir usually closes with is missing here.


Why can't we have a movie which is nothing but tone and plot. Where the goal of the crime noir thriller is simply to entertain, to tell stories of less than stand-up characters and their larger than life pursuits. Movies that are propelled solely by dialogue and tend to the kind of fatal ending that will pull the carpet from under the feet of the wise guys. I would love to see indie movie makers make crime noir's and do it the justice it deserves without feeling the urge to make it either faux modern or in any way tongue in cheek. The story of man and his morals walking down the streets, meeting his match in a femme fatale, taking down one last score only to see it all get away from him.