The Criterion Collection

David Mamet’s Homicide is many things: an introspective character study, an examination of racial and religious identity, a conspiracy thriller—and also, as critics have been noting, a damn good cop drama. “Homicide is the rare big-screen policier that can stand up to The Shield, The Wire, Hill Street Blues, and Homicide: Life on the Street,” raves Noel Murray of the Onion’s AV Club in his review of the film, now available as a Criterion special edition DVD. “The plot is fiendishly clever—full of misdirection and unexpected turns, culminating in a devastating ending—and the dialogue contains some of Mamet’s choicest one-liners . . . It’s one of the greatest ‘pull up a bar stool and let me tell you the damnedest thing’ cop anecdotes of all time.” Amanda Mae Meyncke of Film.com also recommends this “complicated foray into a dark world populated by hard-nosed cops and cryptic occurrences” for its noirish narrative: “This film is a must-see for any Mamet enthusiast but stands on its own as an excellent detective story with remarkably high stakes.”