23 of the Best True-Crime Movie Adaptations
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True story: Sydney Sweeney can straight murder a lewk. But the stunning actress is also an ace on the screen, and missing out on her performance as Reality Leigh Winner, the whistleblower who leaked national secrets to the public, would be a crime. As would skipping out on the following selection of the very best true-crime movie adaptations.
From dark comedies that laugh through their misdeeds to emotionally raw dramas that are essential to modern cinema, we’ve combed through the last five years to unearth a dynamic list of films not only based on true stories, but inspired by true-crime stories and starring your favorite actors. Should you need a breather afterward, hit up our best comedy films of all time or ’80s movies we all need right now
Bad Education
They say, “Nothing you learn in high school matters in the real world.” Not true for the editors running the student newspaper at New York’s Roselyn High School in the early 2000s. It was actually their work that helped expose a massive embezzlement scheme masterminded by superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) and his assistant, Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney). Fun fact: Though Tassone and Gluckin are real, the student reporter who busts them, played by a fantastic Geraldine Viswanathan, is fictional.
BlacKkKlansman
In the 1970s, David Duke founded the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, gathering fellow racists and white supremacists to spew hate, burn crosses, and bomb gay clubs. At the same time, a Colorado Springs precinct hired its first Black detective, Ron Stallworth. His goal: Infiltrate the KKK and gather intelligence on the masked cowards. Based on Stallworth’s 2014 memoir, the film from director Spike Lee goes undercover, exposing the deep-rooted racial tensions still dividing this country.
Boston Strangler
In 1964, a rapist named Albert DeSalvo unmasked himself as the Boston Strangler. But it was the work of two investigative reporters, Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole (played in this 2023 adaptation by Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon, respectively), who broke the story and connected the grisly dots. Of course, not only did the women have to conquer a serial killer, but they also had to overcome resistance from authorities and sexism in the newsroom to bring justice to 13 murdered women.
Breaking
Originally titled 892, Breaking tells the story of Brian Easley, the former Marine who took a Georgia bank and its employees hostage in 2017, threatening to blow the place up if he didn’t get the $892 that VA owed him. John Boyega, of Star Wars and Attack the Block fame, stars as Easley, offering a sobering performance that sheds light on how those who fought for our country on foreign lands are neglected on their homeland. And, yes, you will get John Q vibes.
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl) and Nicole Holofcener (You Hurt My Feelings) team up for this highbrow crime drama about that time biographer Lee Israel committed literary fraud by forging letters from the likes of Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway. The film is based on Israel’s 2008 memoir that asks her fans, haters, and everyone in between to forgive her. And after a sitting with Melissa McCarthy convincingly playing against type, you might run out of reasons not to.
Cocaine Bear
There’s a bear on a tear in a Georgia park; hopped up on cocaine, he’s shredding the bodies of anyone who gets in his way. Now, bear with us (sorry): The bloody rampage is, of course, filmmakers having some fun, but everything before the black bear’s bender actually happened. Back in the ’80s, authorities found that a bear consumed the contents of a duffel bag dropped by a drug smuggler from a plane above. Elizabeth Banks saw promise in the story, so she directs while Keri Russell stars.
Dark Waters
Environmental crime, though not as sexy as, say, dancers extorting yuppie douche-bags, is still crime. Here, Carol
director Todd Haynes takes aim at DuPont. Using a New York Times article, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” as its compass, the film chronicles the fight an Ohio lawyer, Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), wages against the corporate behemoth that knowingly contaminated the public’s drinking water with toxic sludge.
House of Gucci
Is there anything Lady Gaga can’t do? She sings, she dances, she method-acts to the point of no return. Seriously, she needed a nurse on set to make sure she didn’t go too far as Patrizia Reggiani, the socialite who hired a hitman to kill her ex-husband, Mauricio Gucci, in 1995. Directed by Ridley Scott, the film is adapted from Sara Gay Forden’s best seller, and beyond dramatizing the chilling details of the murder, viewers are rewarded with some of the best onscreen fashion moments of 2021.
Hustlers
It took Jennifer Lopez months to perfect her pole routine, but only seconds for her Hustlers character to rip off Wall Street’s plumpest pockets. Adapted from a New York Magazine article chronicling the exploits of a group of dancers who drugged then robbed their wealthy patrons, Lorene Scafaria’s neon-drenched caper is anything but black and white. Illustrating the consequences of a broken moral compass, the director offers a thrilling film fixed firmly in the intersection of sex, money, and power.
Judas and the Black Messiah
Based on the 1969 cover-up of an FBI informant, William O'Neal (LaKeith Stanfield), and the role he played in killing the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), Shaka King’s drama is a gripping tale of race, betrayal, and the pursuit of justice. Of course, the writer/director flexes his artistic license a bit with his telling—necessary when trying to fill in the blanks the government would rather stay left redacted.
Lucky Grandma
Tsai Chin stars in Sasie Sealy’s untold story about an elderly Chinese woman who wins big at the casino, and then lands in the crosshairs of rival gangs. Full disclosure: This bonkers story is entirely fictional, from the chain-smoking grams to her budget bodyguard. The gangs featured, however, are entirely real. Inspired by the Chinese mobs that ran New York City in the 1990s, and in particular a snakehead named Sister Ping, Sealy delivers an unconventional crime comedy you’ll be so glad you watched.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Okay, so the “true crime” designation might be a stretch when pegging Quentin Tarantino’s ninth feature—the director’s twist ending, both imaginative and serendipitous, is entirely fictional—but there is fact here. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, the film follows the careers of a fictional fading actor and his stunt double, while the very real, very awful story of Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, and the Manson family simmers in the background.
Reality
Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney keeps her clothes on for a stellar reenactment of the FBI’s interrogation of Reality Leigh Winner in 2017. Under the guidance of director Tina Satter, Sweeney becomes the 25-year-old whistleblower who leaked intelligence documents about Russian interference in the 2016 election to a website called The Intercept. And in a stroke of genius, Satter equips her and the rest of the cast with verbatim dialogue recorded during the search, inquiry, and arrest.
She Said
On December 20, 2022, the unthinkable happened: Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape. Now safely behind bars, the repugnant movie mogul has New York Times
journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor to thank. It was these two reporters who worked with survivors of Weinstein’s abusive behavior to expose him as the predator he is. It’s also their work that provides the blueprint for Maria Schrader’s methodical drama starring Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as Twohey and Kantor.
The Clovehitch Killer
All parents have secrets. But the skeletons hiding in the closet of Don Burnside, the serial killer at the center of this 2018 thriller, go beyond the whole “I lived through the ’60s” reasoning. Played by Dylan McDermott, Don goes to church, has dinner around the table with his family … and keeps a mysterious shed padlocked out back. Though not a precise retelling, the film is heavily inspired by Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer who strangled 10 women and terrorized Wichita and Park City, Kansas, for years.
The Good Nurse
Who doesn’t love a good medical thriller? Even better: This Netflix Original is totally true. It stars Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne as best friend ICU nurses, Charles Cullen and Amy Loughren—she, a caring single mom with a heart condition; he, the reason some 40 people didn’t live to see morning. As dark and disturbing as it is wild and twisted, The Good Nurse reveals how one caregiver was able to abuse his position and how it took the person closest to him to bring him down.
The Irishman
People don’t just disappear. Or do they? As the frazzled ends of the mystery surrounding Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa have never been tied up, cine-mob maestro Martin Scorsese attempts to close the case with an adaptation of the book I Heard You Paint Houses. Narrative nonfiction from former homicide prosecutor Charles Brandt, the read details the confession of Frank Sheeran, Hoffa’s right-hand man who allegedly turned on his boss. Robert de Niro, no stranger to the gangster epic, takes the lead.
The Silent Twins
With brilliant performances from Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrence, The Silent Twins tells the true story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, identical twins who recoiled from the outside world and created a safe space and personal language all their own. As for the crimes committed, the two girls spent their teens getting into trouble, but the system imprisoning them for life at the age of 19, fearing what it didn’t understand, is the worst offense.
The Tale
Today, Jennifer Fox is an accomplished documentary filmmaker. But back in 1973, she was a 13-year-old girl in a relationship with her 40-something running coach. During that time, she wrote a “fictional” love story that would become source material for her first narrative feature. An unflinching story of abuse and manipulation, The Tale mirrors Fox’s childhood, detailing the love she felt for her abuser (Olympic rower and coach Ted Nash) and chronically the sexual coercion and trauma she endured.
American Animals
Okay, so the college-age idiots in this clever heist flick want to steal a book of birds. But hear us out: This book is John James Audubon's The Birds of America, a national treasure worth millions. And the absurd plot to steal it and auction it off at Christie’s actually happened. Bart Layton, an incredibly innovative director who blends documentary filmmaking with dramatized action to peak entertainment, takes the helm, and with the help of a stellar cast including Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan, the whole thing soars.
The Trial of the Chicago 7
After decades of handing over screenplays packed with pages of accelerated dialogue, Aaron Sorkin parks it in the director’s chair. His directorial debut, a retelling of the infamous trial that decided the fates of seven anti-Vietnam War demonstrators charged with inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, is a thrilling courtroom drama with an ensemble of electrifying performances from Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and more. And, yes, Sorkin wrote this script also.
Till
A powerful, emotional, and entirely necessary watch, Till tells the true story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was kidnapped, beaten, and lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955, and the plight of his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, to bring those involved in his brutal murder to justice. Danielle Deadwyler gives a shattering performance as Mamie, with Jalyn Hall playing Emmett. And when we say to keep the Kleenex nearby, we mean it.
Zola
It was the 148-tweet thread that launched a thousand memes. And unless you were somehow lost to the wilds of Florida’s swamp lands, then you know that this stripper saga begins with, “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me and this bitch here fell out?!” And that Janicza Bravo’s genius adaptation of Aziah “Zola” Wells’ crazy road trip to the Sunshine State ends after a weekend spent navigating the sex trade, dodging bullets and battery, and even witnessing attempted suicide.
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