Category Archives: Neo Noir

Cutter’s Way: post traumatic noir

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

review_Cutters-WayAmerican crime films in the seventies and early eighties were littered with the damaged veterans of the Vietnam War.

They appear in most of the key crime sub-genres: the revenge film (Rolling Thunder), the road movie (Electra Glide in Blue), the drug sub-culture (Who’ll Stop the Rain, the adaption of Robert Stone’s novel, Dog Soldiers), and Blaxsploitation (the 1973 film, Gordon’s War, to name just one of many).

Film noir’s contribution is the 1981 movie, Cutter’s Way.

As Woody Haut argued in Neon Noir, his book on contemporary American crime fiction, Vietnam not only damaged the body politic it blurred the line between the perpetrators of crimes and the people who investigate them. In Cutter’s Way the quest to avenge a young woman’s murder is left to the rejects and outsiders who populate the underbelly of post-Vietnam American society.

Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges), a part-time gigolo and boat salesman, is returning from a late night assignation when his beat-up car stalls in an alleyway. Another vehicle pulls up behind him and in the heavy rain and headlight glare we see a man get out and throw something into a nearby rubbish bin. The car speeds off, nearly hitting Bone in the process.… Read more

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Posted in 1970s American crime films, Crime fiction, Crime film, Neo Noir, Newton Thornburg

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The Red Riding trilogy: David Peace’s Northern England nightmare

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

Seldom does the nuance and grit of hard-boiled and noir crime fiction translate to the screen. A brilliant exception is the movie adaptations of English writer David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet of books.

Tony Crisoni – who has very few credits of note under his belt with the exception of the screenplay for the 1998 version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – has taken Peace’s dense, multi-layered alternative history of murder and police corruption in northern England in the seventies and early eighties, and delivered three disturbing and gripping movies. A feat that is all the more amazing given they were made for TV in the UK.

The first film, 1974, follows cocky young reporter Eddie Dunford as he attempts to prize open the mystery surrounding the unsolved murders of a number of young girls, the latest of whom has just been found sexually abused and with swan’s wings stitched to her back.

In the course of his investigation he comes into contact with John Dawson, a local businessman embroiled in a corrupt relationship with the police, and BJ, an elusive male prostitute. He also becomes sexually involved with the despondent mother of one of the missing girls. In the face of escalating threats, Dunford continues his efforts to find the truth with horrendous consequences.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction, Crime film, David Peace, Neo Noir

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Book review: Wyatt

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

WyattVeteran Australian crime writer Garry Disher has delivered his seventh book featuring the professional criminal and hold-up man, Wyatt, (Wyatt, Text Publishing), and the first since The Fallout in 1997, and it’s fantastic.

In Wyatt the score is a jewel heist, presented by an old colleague who fancies a shot at the big league. There are multiple double crosses courtesy of the cast of characters, including a bent cop, a wannabe gangster, a stone cold French assassin and an unhinged stripper.

There is something about the heist gone wrong genre of crime fiction (and movies) that seldom disappoints and Wyatt is no exception. It’s clear within the first few chapters things will go wrong. You know people are going to get hurt, some fatally, and most, but not all, deserve what’s coming to them. The good part is finding out just how incredible complicated and bad it’s going to get and how the characters react to each twist and turn of the plot.

The aspect of Wyatt that pushes it beyond a simple, albeit, well told heist caper, is the depiction of an old style criminal trying to adapt to a rapidly changing world. In sparse, gritty prose, Disher brilliantly delivers insights into this side of Wyatt’s existence. ‘He was an old style hold-up man: cash, jewellery, paintings.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, Garry Disher, Neo Noir, Parker

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