Entertainment
10 Greatest Crime Sci-Fi Movies of All Time
The broad umbrella that is science fiction has allowed filmmakers to take their audiences to galaxies far, far away or terrify them about the potential threats of artificial intelligence. Whether on Earth or in space, the sci-fi films we adore have pushed our imaginations to the brink as we ponder the what-ifs. With such a vast ability to tell stories, sci-fi subgenres have provided some unique narratives, especially in the crime department.
While we might think of sci-fi as space adventures, the truth is, there’s also a hell of a lot of crime! For this list, we are going to examine the greatest crime sci-fi movies of all time. From dream heists to cyber cops patrolling the streets, these sci-fi crime thrillers have given us extraordinary cinematic moments we continue to celebrate. Even in advanced, futuristic civilizations, crimes are aplenty!
10
‘Gattaca’ (1997)
Directed by Andrew Niccol, Gattaca tells the story of a society strictly divided by genetic engineering where parents can choose their children’s traits, creating an elite class of “Valids.” Vincent (Ethan Hawke), a naturally conceived “In-valid” born with a weak heart, assumes the identity —including blood and hair samples— of genetically superior but paralyzed athlete Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), to travel to space. Just before Vincent’s scheduled launch, a mission director is murdered at the facility, and an eyelash Vincent drops at the crime scene brings the police sniffing around, forcing him to evade genetic background checks.
A retrofuturistic thriller that questions humanity’s spirit in the face of ambition and perseverance, Gattaca brings an all-star cast to a genuinely fascinating premise. Between identity theft and murder, crime is more than abundant. By slipping into a neo-noir-style murder mystery, Gattaca remains gripping from start to finish, and through the exploration of genetic engineering and biometrics, it forces a conversation about a future where DNA dictates your destination. The atmosphere built for the film is a key factor in its brilliance, pairing sleek retro-futurism with stark, cold architecture. Even with crime front and center, the film is a genuine underdog story.
9
‘Predestination’ (2014)
Shall we continue praising Ethan Hawke by discussing another of his exceptional films? This time, it’s 2014’s Predestination. Directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, the thriller follows Temporal Agent (Ethan Hawke) as he travels through history to stop major crimes before they happen, including the mass-casualty terrorist known as the “Fizzle Bomber.” As he investigates future crimes, he meets a mysterious confession-story author (Sarah Snook) who shares a story that leads to a major clue about mind-bending time travel and the bootstrap paradox.
An airtight thriller that flawlessly honors madcap science in order to keep you guessing what the big twist might be, the Spierigs’ film elevates typical time-travel tropes into a tragic, character-driven study of identity and fate. Predestination leaves no loose ends while ensuring the story never veers into uncontrollable territory. It’s a carefully plotted story that works as a slow-burning crime caper. Once again, Hawke does extraordinary work, providing a melancholic, grounded presence as the story’s emotional anchor. If you’re coming to the film fresh, you’d expect Snook to dominate, and she does in a breakout performance that’s almost chameleon-like, finding great nuance to a part that easily could have veered into cheesy territory.
8
‘Dark City’ (1998)
Being accused of murder is quite horrible when you can’t remember a single thing; that’s the premise of Dark City. Directed by Alex Proyas, Dark City follows John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), an amnesiac man who awakens in a perpetually dark, noir-style metropolis. Accused of a string of murders, he soon ventures into the city, a dangerous setting that seems to change all the time.
Dark City is all about establishing a mood, and Proyas does so impeccably. Drawing inspiration from German expressionism in classical cinema, the oppressive atmosphere plays an essential role in the storytelling. For a story that could easily be overwhelming and confusing, the lore and worldbuilding are excruciatingly clear, quite fascinating, and it keeps the narrative gripping. The film uses a classic noir setup to establish the story; you’re hooked on a grounded crusade for the truth. A breathtaking film, we’d likely be championing Dark City today had it not been for the Wachowskis’ masterpiece a year later.
7
‘Upgrade’ (2018)
Another entry in the underrated masterpiece department comes the gripping Leigh Whannell cyberpunk action thriller Upgrade. Set in a hyper-connected near future, the story follows mechanic Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), an analog purist living with his wife, Asha (Melanie Vallejo). When a corrupted self-driving car crash leaves Asha dead and Grey a quadriplegic, a rogue billionaire offers him a controversial cure: SYNAPSE, a clandestine evolution of the original STEM (Simon Maiden) implant that merges directly with the spinal cord.
Mixing a steadfast revenge thriller with a terrifying AI crime story, Upgrade is a brutal, full-throttle story with a killer twist. Through a grimy cyberpunk atmosphere with a technophobic lead character, Whannell expertly makes the setting quite claustrophobic. In turn, Marshall-Green delivers a career-best performance. A clever twist on the body-snatcher story, Grey’s journey is mesmerizing, as he slowly figures out who’s in control. While there are quite a few films that watch a lead character embark on a daring quest alongside a crime-finding artificial intelligence cohort, Upgrade’s iteration is refreshing.
6
‘Minority Report’ (2002)
Steven Spielberg has made extraordinary science fiction films in nearly every decade of his storied career. At the turn of the century, his entry was the exceptional Minority Report. Set in Washington, D.C., in the year 2054, the story follows a specialized police unit called “Precrime” that uses three psychic humans—the “precogs”—to predict and prevent murders before they happen. The plot shifts into overdrive when the head of the Precrime unit, Captain John Anderton (Tom Cruise), is unexpectedly identified by the precogs as the perpetrator of a future murder, forcing him to go on the run to prove his innocence.
A high-octane philosophical thriller, Minority Report forces a rich conversation about fate and free will, the ethical boundaries of preventative law enforcement, and the consequences of government surveillance. The high-profile combination of Cruise and Spielberg proved worthy. Looking back today with a new lens, Minority Report was ahead of the curve in its exploration of personalized targeted advertising, biometric surveillance, and gestural computer interfaces. Perhaps we should be worried if the concept of precogs arrives next!
5
‘Blade Runner 2049’ (2017)
Rarely are sequels better than the original, especially when it helps to reboot a franchise, but Blade Runner 2049 sure came close! Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Blade Runner 2049 serves as a sequel to the 1982 classic. Fret not, we’ll get to Blade Runner soon. The sci-fi noir crime drama follows Officer K (Ryan Gosling), an LAPD “blade runner” who hunts and decommissions rogue synthetic humans known as replicants. After uncovering a buried secret that proves replicants can reproduce biologically, K embarks on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.
At its heart, Blade Runner 2049 works as a smart dissertation on humanity and personhood, marrying a hard-boiled detective story with a philosophical exploration of the nature of the soul. Villeneuve takes the gritty confines of the original and deliberately forces his audience to absorb the world, from the radioactive, blood-red ruins of Las Vegas to the rising sea walls of Los Angeles. Though Ford is more than present, it is Gosling’s story; together, they work profoundly well, alongside a dynamite ensemble. Every frame, every sound, every image of this film is worth watching. Some may call it better than the original, but that’s a tough sell.
4
‘Looper’ (2012)
Science fiction writers love time travel, but not every screenwriter can tackle the loop well. Fortunately for writer-director Rian Johnson, his skill set is on full display in Looper. Johnson’s masterpiece tells the story of Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a 2044 “looper” who kills targets sent back in time by future syndicates. When his older self (Bruce Willis) is sent back to be killed, he escapes, causing young Joe to hunt his future self, who is trying to kill a child destined to become a crime boss.
Johnson treats time travel not as a magical plot device but as a dirty, illegal method used by future mobsters, thus subverting common tropes for a whip-smart crime thriller. Looper is a satisfying story that lets the themes of aging, regret, and the cyclical nature of violence mirror the science-fiction element that drives it. The film navigates the potential paradoxes by focusing first on the characters’ emotional arcs. Like many time-travel-based stories, the script tackles the morality and ethics of attempting to change timelines and the potential consequences that accompany them. Gordon-Levitt and Willis have stellar chemistry, and Emily Blunt provides the necessary groundedness and emotion, truly anchoring the latter part of the film.
3
‘A Scanner Darkly’ (2006)
One of the more distinctive films of the early aughts was A Scanner Darkly. The adult animated sci-fi thriller from Richard Linklater is based on the 1977 novel by Philip K. Dick and is set in a future America that lost its war on drugs. Undercover narcotics cop Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) becomes addicted to a mind-altering substance known as Substance D, causing him to suffer a fractured psyche and lose grip on his own reality. As he investigates the source, his brain deteriorates, causing him to spy on himself unknowingly.
A brilliant take on surveillance, paranoia, the loss of identity, and the devastating consequences of addiction, A Scanner Darkly is an introspective philosophical work with groundbreaking rotoscope animation that feels off and slightly dreamlike. This unique technique is not just stylistic; it is integral to the plot, enabling the representation of the scramble suit. It might feel disorienting, even psychedelic, but it’s instrumental. A Scanner Darkly forces you into questioning personal identity crises through the war on drugs and the dangers of surveillance, resulting in a scathing satire directed to perfection.
2
‘Blade Runner’ (1982)
An adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Blade Runner tells the story of Rick Deckard (Ford), a burnt-out blade runner tasked with hunting down and retiring rogue androids—known as replicants— engineered for slave labor but escaped to Earth. Set in the year 2019, the revolt is led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), who seeks their creator, the bioengineers at the powerful Tyrell Corporation, to demand an extension of their lifespans. Throw in a sci-fi love story between Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young), a Replicant girl, and you have a tremendous neo-noir science fiction film.
Directed by Ridley Scott, Blade Runner is all about its atmosphere, as Scott crafts a breathtaking, moody, gritty cyberpunk future set against crime-thriller tropes. Deckard works well as a hard-boiled detective within the world’s specificity. The neon-lit metropolis may look stunning, but how the urban decay is infused gives the world its unique identity. All these years later, there is still a timelessness to Blade Runner— and not just because the franchise continues to expand. Perhaps it’s Barry’s final iconic monologue that the film resonates still today.
1
‘Inception’ (2010)
No one has played with a dream heist quite like Christopher Nolan. Inception follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a professional thief who steals corporate secrets by infiltrating his targets’ subconscious. A chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person’s idea into a target’s subconscious sends him back into action. Blurring the lines between dream and reality, this multi-layered film uses corporate espionage and a dream heist as the backdrop against a twisted, complex dreamscape.
Tackling themes of memory, grief, and the perception of reality, Inception is one of the most fascinating films ever made. The meticulous heist planning is profound, setting up the mind as the “scene of the crime.” Nolan’s ability to engross audiences while blowing their minds is unmatched. Toss in a masterclass in editing and sound design, and Inception stands out as a unique beast. With a brilliant cast, Inception is an action-packed adventure that goes to places other films never dreamed of (pun intended). The legendary ending is still debated to this day, an expert combination of sci-fi and crime that makes it the pinnacle of the category.
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