No film here is good or bad. It is only like something.

2015 · Thriller

An FBI agent is recruited onto a cross-border task force going after a cartel, and is told very little about who she is working for or what the job actually is. She spends the film trying to find out.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• RealisticClearly realistic

2017 · Science fiction

A police officer whose job is retiring old synthetic humans turns up a buried secret and goes looking for a man who disappeared thirty years earlier. Slow, very large, and mostly quiet.

• FantasticStrongly fantastic
• EpicClearly epic
• SlowClearly slow
• ComplicatedClearly complicated

2008 · Action

Batman, a new district attorney and a straight-arrow cop try to break organised crime in Gotham, and a criminal with no name and no plan starts pulling the city apart. Much of it is about what each of them will agree to do.

• HeavyClearly heavy
• EpicClearly epic

1996 · Crime

A car salesman short of money hires two men to kidnap his own wife, and the plan goes wrong immediately. A very pregnant small-town police chief works it out at her own pace.

• RealisticClearly realistic

2005 · Drama

Over two days in Los Angeles a dozen strangers collide in traffic, at gunpoint and in each other's houses, and race is in every exchange. The stories run in parallel and keep crossing.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyClearly heavy

2012 · Comedy

Two rookie cops with nothing to show for themselves are sent back into high school undercover, where the social rules have changed since they were students. It runs on the two of them bouncing off each other.

• SimpleClearly simple
• LightClearly light

1995 · Crime

A career thief planning one last big score and the detective chasing him circle each other across Los Angeles. It gives both men full lives outside the job, and the two sit down together only once.

• RealisticClearly realistic

1982 · Science fiction

A retired policeman in a permanently raining Los Angeles is brought back to hunt four artificial humans who have come to Earth looking for their maker. Slow, wet, and more interested in the question than the chase.

• FantasticClearly fantastic

2015 · Crime

A Boston gangster becomes an FBI informant and uses the arrangement to take over the city, while the agent who signed him up keeps covering for him. Cold and talky, with long scenes of men at tables.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2018 · Drama

The first Black officer on the Colorado Springs force answers a Klan recruitment ad by phone and sends a white colleague to the meetings in his place. Funny for long stretches, then it stops being funny.

• RealisticClearly realistic

2022 · Mystery

A detective who cannot sleep looks into a man's fall from a mountain, and spends more and more of his time watching the dead man's wife. It moves slowly, and much of it is two people being careful about what they say.

• RealisticClearly realistic
• IntimateClearly intimate

2017 · Drama

During the 1967 riots, police pull a group of young Black men and two women out of a motel annexe and question them through the night. The middle hour stays in that corridor and does not let up.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• RealisticStrongly realistic

2013 · Drama

New Year's Eve in Oakland, and a twenty-two-year-old runs errands, picks up his daughter and tries to sort his life out. Based on real events, shot close and small, staying with one man hour by hour.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy
• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• SimpleStrongly simple
• IntimateClearly intimate

2007 · Mystery

Two private investigators from a working-class Boston neighbourhood are hired to look for a missing four-year-old in the places the police cannot reach. A detective story that keeps turning into an argument about what is right.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy

2017 · Crime

After a bank job goes wrong, a man spends one night crossing Queens trying to get his brother out of custody, and every fix he tries makes it worse. It never stops moving and the music sits right on top of you.

• FastStrongly fast
• HeavyClearly heavy
• RealisticClearly realistic

2016 · Crime

Two brothers rob small branches of one particular Texas bank, with a Ranger weeks from retirement working out where they will hit next. Wide empty roads, dry jokes, and a lot of waiting.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2023 · Comedy

A mild college professor moonlights for the police, posing as a contract killer in sting operations, and turns out to be very good at inventing a new man for each job. Then one of the women he is sent to trap likes the man he is playing.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2007 · Comedy

London's best policeman is promoted sideways to a village where nothing happens and paired with a partner raised on action films. Jokes come thick and fast, and it gets very loud towards the end.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2002 · Crime

A policeman has spent ten years undercover in a Hong Kong triad while one of the triad's men has spent the same ten years rising inside the police. Both sides find out there is a mole, and it moves fast.

• RealisticClearly realistic

2024 · Horror

A new FBI agent with a knack for hunches is put on a decades-old case of families killed in their own homes, all tied together by coded letters signed with one name. Slow and quiet, with the scary parts kept just out of frame.

• HeavyStrongly heavy

2003 · Mystery

In 1986 a rural Korean province gets its first serial killings, and two local detectives who work by instinct and beatings are joined by a careful man from Seoul. It is often funny, and the case runs for years.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy

2002 · Science fiction

In a Washington where murders are stopped before they happen, the cop who runs the unit is named by the system as a future killer and has to run from his own team. It is a chase with a mystery underneath it.

• Plot-drivenClearly plot-driven
• FantasticClearly fantastic

2003 · Mystery

Three men who grew up on the same Boston street are pulled back together when one man's daughter is found dead and another is the detective on the case. Heavy and slow, and mostly about the three of them.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy

2013 · Thriller

Two little girls vanish from a street on Thanksgiving, and while a detective works the case one of the fathers decides the police are moving too slowly. Long, dark and rainy, and it gets ugly.

• HeavyStrongly heavy
• RealisticStrongly realistic

2024 · Action

A former Marine cycling into a small Southern town to post his cousin's bail is knocked off his bike by police who take his cash and dare him to argue. He tries the front counter and the paperwork first.

• RealisticStrongly realistic

2022 · Mystery

In 1950s London someone is killed backstage at a long-running West End murder mystery, and a tired inspector is paired with an eager young constable. Light, quick, and full of jokes about whodunnits.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2022 · Action

In his second year out at night, Batman follows a killer who leaves riddles addressed to him at every scene, and the trail runs into the city's oldest families. Long, rainy, and closer to a detective film than a superhero one.

Sits near the middle on every axis.

2006 · Crime

A young cop goes undercover inside a Boston crime boss's crew while one of the boss's own men rises through the state police, and each side works out there is a rat. It is long, loud and full of swearing.

• HeavyClearly heavy
• RealisticClearly realistic

2011 · Action

A police team goes into a tower block run by a crime boss to take him out floor by floor, and the building fills up behind them. Almost nothing but fighting, in one building, for ninety minutes.

• FastStrongly fast
• SimpleStrongly simple
• Plot-drivenStrongly plot-driven

2009 · Mystery

A retired Buenos Aires court investigator starts writing a novel about the 1974 murder case he never let go of. It moves between the two times, and the case is only half of what it is about.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyClearly heavy

2016 · Horror

A clumsy village policeman in rural Korea looks into a run of killings that began after a Japanese stranger moved into the woods. Two and a half hours that start out funny and do not stay that way.

• HeavyStrongly heavy

2017 · Drama

Months after her daughter's murder goes unsolved, a woman rents three billboards outside her town to ask the police chief why. Angry, funny in a mean way, and full of shouting.

• Character-drivenStrongly character-driven
• HeavyClearly heavy
• RealisticClearly realistic

2001 · Crime

A rookie's first day with the LAPD narcotics unit is spent in a car with a detective who has his own way of doing things. One day, mostly two men talking, and the ground keeps shifting under the new guy.

• HeavyClearly heavy

2017 · Mystery

A wildlife tracker finds a young woman dead in the snow on a Wyoming reservation, and a new FBI agent arrives from Las Vegas with no idea what she is walking into. Cold, quiet and slow, until it is not.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• HeavyStrongly heavy

2007 · Mystery

A cartoonist at a San Francisco paper gets pulled into the Zodiac killings and keeps working the case for years after everyone else has stopped. Long, talky, and full of names, dates and paperwork.

• RealisticStrongly realistic
• ComplicatedStrongly complicated

2016 · Animation

A rabbit becomes the first of her kind on the police force in a city run by animals, and gets forty-eight hours to crack a missing-mammal case with a con-artist fox as her only lead. Bright, quick, and built like a detective story.

• FantasticClearly fantastic