The greatest gritty thrillers and dark comedies set in Los Angeles

There are many reasons why “Die Hard” is maybe the best action movie of all time. The casting of Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman. The clockwork, propulsive plot. However, it also plays so well with undercutting the perceived glamour of Los Angeles. It’s Christmas, but everything is sunshine and palm trees. Nakatomi Plaza is a remarkable yet lifeless skyscraper. You may be snorting coke at your holiday party in L.A.’s newest architectural marvel, but that won’t save you from Hans Gruber.

There are the areas of Los Angeles you often see in film. Then, there are the areas you see in the nihilistic punk comedy “Repo Man.” Emilio Estevez plays a wayward teen who falls in with some, well, repo men. They repossess cars in areas of Los Angeles that tourists did not go to in the 1980s. It’s a gritty, snarky style that never feels like “Movie Los Angeles.”

Private eye yarns and film noir stories were often set in Los Angeles back in the day. You can, to a degree, thank Raymond Chandler for that, as he liked to set his stories in the so-called City of Angels. Chandler co-wrote the screenplay for “Double Indemnity” with the film’s director, the acclaimed Billy Wilder. In this noir classic, a Los Angeles-based insurance salesman and a bored housewife conspire to murder her husband for the insurance money, but things quickly start to unravel.

The genius of “The Long Goodbye” is taking Raymond Chandler’s 1940s sensibilities and dropping them into 1970s Los Angeles. Elliott Gould, in a great performance, plays Philip Marlowe as a man out of time. He strolls through town in a black suit, chain-smoking, surrounded by health-food devotees and swimsuit-clad Sun worshippers. However, he still has a moral center, which drives him through this story of rich, evil people in ocean-side mansions.

Well, it wasn’t going to be “Escape from Los Angeles” for John Carpenter. “They Live” is also set in Los Angeles, but Carpenter’s first proper feature really tapped into a dark vision of Los Angeles in the 1970s. It’s basically Carpenter’s riff on “Night of the Living Dead,” but instead of zombies, it’s gang members. Also, standing side-by-side with the handful of staff still working at a to-be-decommissioned precinct in South Central is a murderer who is headed to death row. The film is low-budget, and it shows, but it also shows why Carpenter was on his way to becoming an acclaimed director.

“Terminator 2: Judgment Day” is a bit too slick to be dark or gritty, and it features a robot man saying, “Hasta la vista, baby.” “The Terminator,” though, is a nastier film, a horror movie without the same level of action-movie trappings. Plus, when we see future Los Angeles, there are numerous human skulls just lying around a post-apocalyptic landscape. Not exactly cheery.

We get to see a lot of Los Angeles in “Speed.” However, it’s mostly the streets and freeways, so not exactly the beaches and the mansions. Plus, there is the reason why we are seeing so much of L.A. in the movie that really birthed the “’Die Hard’ on a…” sub-genre. An LAPD officer played by Keanu Reeves is on a bus that has to stay above 50 miles per hour, otherwise a bomb on said bus will go off.

Quentin Tarantino has made several movies set in Los Angeles. To spread some love around to other directors, we’ll just include “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” on this list. It’s his most-Los Angeles movie, and it includes a lot of his affinity for 1970s Hollywood. That’s not to say it’s cheery by any means. After all, the Manson Family plays a significant role in the plot of the movie.

“Collateral” is atypical in two ways. One, Tom Cruise plays a straight-up villain. Two, you see the Los Angeles subway system. Jamie Foxx plays a taxi driver who picks up Cruise’s Vincent. What he doesn’t know, at first, is that Vincent is a contract killer with a few targets to take out, and being driven around in a taxi by an unaware patsy is part of the plan.

Like Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson frequently sets his movies in Los Angeles. It harkens back to his youth in the San Fernando Valley. “Inherent Vice,” based on a Thomas Pynchon novel, is a darkly comedic mystery. Joaquin Phoenix plays a private eye/drug enthusiast in a world full of crooked cops, crooked business tycoons, crooked dentists, you name it.

Hey, another writer/director who loves Los Angeles, but not in a cheery way. Shane Black wrote “Lethal Weapon,” which paved the way for his career, including directing his own films. It’s 1977 Los Angeles and two private eyes are drawn into a conspiracy involving the automotive industry and the porn industry. Like most of Black’s work, “The Nice Guys” is snarky, and at times sophomoric, but it’s a really good dramedy that counterbalances lush landscapes with morbid actions.

“Ambulance” is not exactly rich with intellectual ideas. It’s a Michael Bay movie, after all. However, it is slick and fun, and Jake Gyllenhaal is really enjoying himself. He plays one of two brothers who, in the wake of a bank robbery gone awry, hijack an ambulance and drive it all over Los Angeles until they figure out an escape route.

This is a Marlowe story set contemporaneously, so it’s different from “The Long Goodbye.” Humphrey Bogart starred as Marlowe, with Bogie's on-and-off-screen paramour Lauren Bacall in the femme fatale role. “The Big Sleep” is considered a noir classic, but is also known for having a plot that is hard to parse. It also inspired, in a way, the Coen Brothers’ classic “The Big Lebowski,” but that’s a straight-up comedy and not one for this list.

A dark comedy need not involve violence. “The Graduate” is a comedy of existential dread. Don’t think it’s a dark L.A. movie? Benjamin Braddock is drifting through life, drifting in pools, you name it. He starts up an affair with a married family friend, the famed Mrs. Robinson. Mrs. Robinson later denies the affair and accuses Benjamin of impropriety. Even the end of the film is no cheery Hollywood topper. Benjamin and Elaine, Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, flee her wedding, but in one of the most-famous ending scenes ever (spoiler, we guess), the camera focuses on the faces of the two of them, having no clue what comes next after the adrenaline of the grand gesture has worn off.

This is a very ‘70s take on a dark Los Angeles comedy. Warren Beatty stars in Hal Ashby’s film about a womanizing hairdresser dealing with juggling a few of his paramours. There is a subtle satire at work in that the 1968 Presidential election is percolating in the background, but all the narcissists and doofuses in this insulated world seem to have no idea. It’s an overlooked ‘70s movie that really feels like a ‘70s movie.

Well, L.A. is right in the title! Some people consider “To Live and Die in L.A.” a true thriller classic. We don’t quite rank it that high, but it’s a compelling, dark tale of crime in Los Angeles. Two Secret Service agents are tracking down a counterfeiter, and they are willing to go to great lengths to nab him. It also has a beloved soundtrack from Wang Chung.

We didn’t include the Coens’ “The Big Lebowski,” but we can certainly include “Barton Fink.” It’s a nightmarish, dare we say Kafkaesque, take on a classic storytelling trope. Namely, Los Angeles is different from New York. Also, Broadway is different from Hollywood. The titular Barton Fink is a talented, if arrogant, playwright who takes a job writing a movie in Los Angeles. He begins to unravel, and also begins to wonder if his neighbor, played by John Goodman, is altogether trustworthy.

“Get Shorty” is another Hollywood story, but it’s less cynical about showbiz and also has way more action than “Barton Fink.” Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, John Travolta plays Chili Palmer, a mob enforcer with a love for film. When he heads to L.A. on a job, he gets himself involved in the industry. While still, you know, dealing with his mob work.

Denzel Washington won his second Oscar for his work on “Training Day.” King Kong had nothing on him, after all. Washington plays a veteran cop who knows his way around the dodgiest areas of Los Angeles. Ethan Hawke is a young cop working his way up, and he is tasked with spending a day learning the ropes under Washington. Unfortunately for Hawke, Washington’s cop is dirty. Filthy, even.

It’s either “Training Day” or “Chinatown” that earns the title of bleakest Los Angeles movie outside of horror. Well, other than “L.A. Confidential,” but that movie isn’t any good. “Chinatown” is a noir classic, one of the last original noir movies or one of the first neo-noir movies. Based in part on the scandals of actual 1930s Los Angeles, “Chinatown” stars Jack Nicholson as a private eye who gets in over his head, because the powers that be, well, they be in power.

We’ll end here, since it is a movie about the movie industry. Damian Chazelle, the director of “La La Land,” took a decidedly darker look at Los Angeles. “Babylon” is a look at early Hollywood that is all drugs, sexual depravity, and despair. Though it co-starred Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, it proved too dark, too polarizing, and too long to really grab audiences. Which is too bad, because the movie is quite good.