ABSTRACT
In looking at the way the media present and represent issues around crime and justice, the focus of critical discussion has tended to be on the press and print media or television as well as, more recently, the various forms of new social media. Consideration of the ways in which crime and justice have been represented in the cinema and film is less usual. The appeal of crime in films, as well as of crime in other contexts, can be linked with the notion of moral boundaries and the idea of closure. The term film noir, translated as ‘black film’, was first applied by French film critics to describe the rise of Hollywood crime dramas of the 1940s and 1950s. The portrayal of gangsters as wealthy and hedonistic was seen in some quarters as glorifying crime and violence and arguably led to the backlash and increased censorship of film in the USA.
