The crime film has so many neat little sub-genres. One of the best is the small-town crime film. The small-town crime genre is often full of locals familiar with each other's past, present, and some idea of where their future lay. The small-town crime genre gives directors and actors the ability to play with those specific provocations. Whether it be disparate working people on the economic margins looking to make a big score or the alarming amount of evil that creeps into their way of life, disrupting the simplicity of a small town, these films often wrestle with big moral and ethical questions.
The small-town crime genre is rich with great work from talented directors. Especially the Coen Brothers who could've had at least three entries on this list alone: Fargo, Raising Arizona, and Blood Simple,, to name a few. But, what gets to the heart of what makes this genre so much fun to talk about is the varied approaches to showcasing the horrors of brutal violence seeping into a more modern society. It's a collision of lifestyles and one that very few people can reckon with. As such, here are the best small-town crime films, ranked.
9 A History of Violence
Abandoning the provocations of body horror to instead illicit true terror in the form of small-town crime, A History of Violence is a film that keeps you on your toes. Viggo Mortensen perfectly fills the shoes of Cronenberg as the leading man protagonist who has to wrestle with the unsanctioned violence that wanders into his family-owned diner. After Mortensen becomes a hero for disposing of some crooks, Cronenberg’s film shows how a generation of violence can seep into the everyday. While also walking on a razor's edge with the film's twists and turns.
8 Cop Land
In a town full of feuding corrupt police officers, including some retired and came to the small New Jersey suburb for tax benefits, Cop Land is a film stacked to the tee with great actors that are at each other's throats. Sylvester Stallone plays the lone morally bound sheriff, whose quiet nature leads him to be a pushover for all the corrupt cops. Harvey Keitel leads a troop at odds with Figgsy (an always intense Ray Liotta) because his old partner was killed, so Figgsy starts to harbor resentment. The film turns the small Jersey town into a classic western. Full of malicious, corrupt cops taking the law and undermining it to no end, the film builds to an epic shootout.
7 Rolling Thunder
In the vein, of nasty revenge B-movies but with far more on its mind courtesy of Paul Schrader’s script, Rolling Thunder dives right into the American landscape at its most merciless and desolate. Disillusioned with reality upon returning home from Vietnam, Major Rane (William Devane) attempts to readjust after spending years as a POW. What he finds is a straight path to violence, as ruthless thugs raid his home and take his hand. Directed by Johnny Flynn, the film delves deep into small-town Americana at is dirtiest and lowly. The setting offers no salvation for its characters, only judgment by the end of a gun barrel.
6 In the Heat of the Night
The swampy confines of rural life in the south during the 60s had its nebbish racism and lawlessness. In The Heat Of The Night — a seminal American classic — Norman Jewison uses the trappings of a noir, murder mystery to show what it's like for a person of color to navigate. Sidney Poitier's legendary grace and charisma were perfect for Virgil Tibbs, a big-city homicide detective who unwillingly becomes ensnared in a murder case because of a run-in with the local chief, played by Rod Steiger. The film has an unsettling, mysterious atmosphere that puts us in the shoes of Tibbs as he has to navigate this ugly landscape and still do his job uninterrupted. A classic film that went on to win 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
5 The Night of The Hunter
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The trappings of a small Christian town become relinquished by the evil that sneaks its way into the layered work of Charles Laughton. The film was from the longtime actor whose only chance to direct was The Night of The Hunter. Dark for its subject matter at the time, Robert Mitchum plays the killer preacher man to devilish delight. With “Love and Hate” tattooed on his fists, the religious allegory becomes physical, manifesting in the duality of a priest who relishes in hell. Mitchum tails two kids that he dreams of murdering, towering off the quaint town where everything on the surface is perfect. But Mitchum delves deep into the carnage to make sure nothing will stay the same.
4 Fargo
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The Coen Brothers are masters of the crime genre, honing in on two-bit crooks with often moral decay and a satirical glee that plays to their clear, strong sense of humor. Moving into the confines of small-time politics and lowly conmen in small corners of America are part of their filmography. Fargo is an early crime masterwork from the Coens that acts like a savage tale of desperation and lowly criminals who abide by no moral code. Filled with an incredible lead role from Coen muse Frances McDormand, which earned her first Oscar.
3 Memories of Murder
The film is not only a great detective mystery, but a reminder of the technological advances that aided police work and made it easier to do their jobs. Memories of Murder also shows the possibility of justice being served not as a moral or ethical device but as a clear-eyed indictment that a crime has been committed and the right person has been sentenced. Bong Joon-ho’s film stars the always reliable Song Kang-ho and Kim Sang-kyung as feuding detectives trying to catch a serial murderer and rapist in the small Gyunggi province in South Korea. But, even with the brilliant detective work, the inability to bring a killer to justice because of the lack of funding and technology in this small town proves to put their hard work futile.
2 In Cold Blood
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Richard Brooks's In Cold Blood is a documentary-like depiction of a brutal murder that inspired the Truman Capote book of the same name. Based on the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in a small rural town, Brooks and legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall shot much of the film in the actual locations. Giving the film a deeply unsettling tone and an atmosphere of dread. Starring Robert Blake and Scott Wilson, the film almost follows their motives exclusively. Trapped in the psyche of two criminals driven to murder, the film never spares the details of going for the throat unflinchingly.
1 Badlands
Terrence Malick’s films often toe the duality between the grace and chaos of the natural beauty of the world. With his impressionistic debut Badlands, Malick cemented himself as an artist to watch. Inspired by the real-life murder spree by Charles Starkweather in the 1950s, Malick showed the beauty of the open road, life in the Midwest, but also how the violent randomness of the world all come colliding. With Martin Sheen in the lead as the charismatic devil, and a radiant Sissy Spacek as the young lover following, Badlands is a sweeping, epic, and beautiful look at small-town life upended by a burning romance that acts as its own force of nature.