This book explores the formal and thematic conventions of crime film,
the contexts in which these have flourished and their links with the
social issues of a globalized world. The crime film has traditionally
been identified with suspense, a heterogeneous aesthetic and a tacit
social mind. However, a good number of the crime films produced since
the early 2000s have shifted their focus from action or suspense and
towards melodrama in narratives that highlight the social dimension of
crime, intensify their realist aesthetics and dwell on subjectivity.
With the 1940s wave of Hollywood semi-documentary crime films and 1970s
generic revisionism as antecedents, these crime films find inspiration
in Hollywood cinema and constitute a transnational trend. With a close
look at Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000), David Fincher's Zodiac
(2007), Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (2009) and Tomas Alfredson's
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), this book sets out the stylistic and
thematic conventions, contexts and cultural significance of a new
transnational trend in crime film.