A lovely dame with dangerous lies employs the services of a private detective, who is quickly caught up in the mystery and intrigue of a statuette known as the Maltese Falcon.
Through a fluke circumstance, a ruthless woman stumbles across a suitcase filled with $60,000, and is determined to hold onto it even if it means murder.
Johnny Flanagan did not have the privileges of a good education or wealthy background but the streets developed his natural talent to be a great fighter. His enormous potential to reach the top is born out of a string of spectacular successes. All of which is brought to a halt when he develops a physical relationship with his manager's wife, the beautiful but manipulative Lorna. His naive temperament is no match for her callous, dispassionate scheming and he unwittingly becomes a pawn in Lorna's ultimate plan... .to murder her husband.
After spending two years in prison, framed for accepting a bribe, former newspaper reporter Harry Barber is released, bitter and disillusioned. Feeling like he were owed something for his loss of time, he proceeds to get himself involved in a simple kidnapping plot which turns out to be more complex than he imagined.
A $10-million diamond rip-off, a stolen identity, a new life married to a diplomat. Laure Ash has risked big, won big. But then a tabloid shutterbug snaps her picture in Paris, and suddenly, enemies from Laure's secret past know who and where she is. And they all want their share of the diamond heist. Or her life. Or both.
Private eye Jake Gittes lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.
Juliet Forrest is convinced that the reported death of her father in a mountain car crash was no accident. Her father was a prominent cheese scientist working on a secret recipe. To prove it was murder, she enlists the services of private eye Rigby Reardon. He finds a slip of paper containing a list of people who are 'The Friends and Enemies of Carlotta'.
Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.
In the late 1940s, a murderous couple known as the 'The Lonely Hearts Killers' kills close to a dozen people. Two detectives try to nab the duo who find their targets via the personals in the paper.
In the midst of a searing Florida heat wave, a woman convinces her lover, a small-town lawyer, to murder her rich husband.
Soon after a veteran returns from war, his cheating wife is found dead. He evades police in an attempt to find the real murderer.
Three fraternal bank robbers, languishing in jail, discover a profitable (if not dodgy) way to spend their time. Crime can most certainly pay, if you "know wot I mean?" However when sex and greed rear-up between the good crims and the bad cops, the consequences are both bizarre and fatal.
Sadistic killer-for-hire Philip Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.
Cashier and part-time starving artist Christopher Cross is absolutely smitten with the beautiful Kitty March. Kitty plays along, but she's really only interested in Johnny, a two-bit crook. When Kitty and Johnny find out that art dealers are interested in Chris's work, they con him into letting Kitty take credit for the paintings. Cross allows it because he is in love with Kitty, but his love will only let her get away with so much.
Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.
A seductive housewife draws an insurance salesman into a plot of adultery and crime to collect on her husband's life insurance.
Nicky, an accomplished con artist, gets romantically involved with his disciple Jess but later ends their relationship. Years later, she returns as a femme fatale to spoil his plans.
A fatally shot female gangleader recounts her sordid life of crime to a police officer just before she dies.
War heroes Rip Murdock and Johnny Drake are sent to Washington, D.C, to receive top honors for their service. Johnny, seemingly terrified by the publicity that awaits him, jumps off the train and later turns up dead. Suspecting foul play, Rip begins digging into his pal's past. He encounters cover-ups, threats to his own life and deadly femme fatale Coral Chandler.
A damsel in distress agrees to run away with her wealthy lover in order to escape from her abusive husband. But all is not as it seems in this 1940s film noir.