What is the absolute worst thing you would do to get ahead in life? Would you lie? Steal? Take a life? For almost as long as movies have been used to tell stories, filmmakers have been asking these questions, as they try to get at the heart of what drives people to do selfish, heinous things.
Lots of crime thrillers revel in the sensationalism of serial murderers or gangsters, people who commit the kinds of crimes we tell ourselves come from pure evil. There will always be an Anton Chigurh or a John Doe lurking in the collective fictional consciousness, ready to commit bloodshed for its own sake. But adjacent to the crime-thriller is the neo-noir, a revitalization of the classic noir films of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, a genre defined by a rejection of moral absolutism and an interrogation of the values we claim to hold so dear. And one of the best in the genre comes from a filmmaker whose name is synonymous with mischievous demons and web-swinging superheroes, one who’s responsible for an underrated ‘90s classic with a brand new Arrow Video 4K UHD Blu-ray that will once again force viewers to reckon with the capacity for evil that lurks inside us all.
