10 of the Best Detectives Movie Ever!

Glass Onion, three years after Knives Out lacerates a rich bunch of assholes, returns Blanc (Daniel Craig) to solve an even bigger anti-wealthy mystery, demonstrating Netflix was, well, on the money in spending hundreds of millions of dollars to turn the character into the new Sherlock Holmes.

Is the amiable private eye destined to join the ranks of cinema’s greatest sleuths? With two excellent features under his belt, he’s clearly on his way to becoming one of those names.

Blanc has yet to prove himself worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of cinematic gumshoes, but the history of detective series shows that it is more the rule than the exception for fictional investigators to outgrow their stars and have new actors come in to play them.

Benoit Blanc mysteries seem incomplete without Daniel Craig, but sometimes fictional characters take on lives of their own. Here are 12 of the most iconic film detectives and the actors who played them.

On a technicality, we must omit David Suchet. The actor portrayed Poirot for a total of 70 episodes of the eponymous TV series that ran from 1989 to 2013 and adapted all of Agatha Christie’s TV novels. More than just loudness, though, he perfectly captures Poirot’s blend of uptight fussiness and charm, playing a guy who knows he is the smartest man in the room but doesn’t want to say so because he doesn’t want to be rude.

Although it may be sacrilegious to say so, Sidney Lumet’s multi-Oscar-nominated Murder on the Orient Express adaptation is still the star-studded gold standard to which all subsequent adaptations, including Kenneth Branagh’s and the Knives Out films, are compared.

In his portrayal of Poirot, Albert Finney emphasizes the character’s more comical mannerisms, but this serves the picture well by setting up its most deadly serious moments.

Where to Watch: Fubo, Kanopy, Pluto

Even if it deviates somewhat from the source material (4.50 from Paddington), Margaret Rutherford’s Jane Marple makes her debut in Murder, She Said and goes on to play the keen investigator three more times with a dotty-like-a-fox cleverness.

There’s a bit more of a comedy of manners (’60s type) vibe than I would have liked thanks to the film’s emphasis on Christie’s humor, but that’s fine because even Agatha Christie didn’t love the adaptation. This novel is breezy and full of action, perfect for the ever-busy Miss Marple: She sees a murder occur on the train and decides to investigate by posing as a housekeeper.

Where to Watch: Britbox

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Where to Watch: The Criterion Channel

Where to Watch: Digital rental

Gordon Parks’ picture, one of the most influential and successful of the blaxploitation era, features relatively little detection even though it was directed by a black man, edited by a black man, and scored by a black guy, Isaac Hayes (many of the films of the era with Black leads featured behind-the-camera teams that were almost entirely white; even Shaft nearly had a white actor in the lead).

As Shaft, a private investigator faces Black mobsters, he initially views them as the adversary but eventually realizes that the Mafia is the true threat and begins to cooperate with law enforcement to bring them to justice. There were two decent follow-ups and a fantastic remake in 2000, but Richard Roundtree will always be John Shaft.

Where to Watch: HBO Max

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Where to Watch: HBO Max

The success of James Patterson’s intellectual police detective Alex Cross has been slightly greater in print than on screen (30+ books versus three movies), but that could soon change with the upcoming Prime Video series starring Aldis Hodge. Morgan Freeman stars as the detective trying to track down Cross’s missing niece after she was abducted by a Buffalo Bill–style killer in Kiss the Girls.

While the film makes a few too many attempts to mimic the success of Silence of the Lambs, Morgan Freeman shines as the lead and remains believable as a human being no matter how much the events around him are exaggerated for Hollywood.

Where to Watch: HBO Max

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Sam Spade

By 1941, two pretty good adaptations of the same novel had previously depicted Hammett’s unsentimental Sam Spade, but that year marked the character’s fullest expression.

This one, starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston, is the stuff of legend; it has never been topped for its hardboiled noir qualities, its enticing femme fatale (Mary Astor), or its unforgettable center prop (the most renowned MacGuffin in film history).

Where to Watch: HBO Max

Philo Vance

Although crime novelist S. S. Van Dine’s creation Philo Vance hasn’t been seen much on screen since the 1940s, his character inspired 15 films starring 10 different actors over nearly two decades. Even though the series’ later chapters tend to be formulaic B mysteries, there are still some gems to be found.

The Kennel Murder Case, directed by Michael Curtiz and stars a pre-Nick Charles William Powell as the effete, high-society detective, also features Mary Astor (The Maltese Falcon) (Casablanca).

Where to Watch: Prime Video, Paramount+

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