MovieMuse

Best Film Noir Movies on Prime Video

Every film noir movie streaming on Prime Video in the US right now — 30 films ranked by rating, checked against Prime Video’s live catalog.

Updated July 2026 · Availability refreshed from Prime Video US

1
The Third Man poster

The Third Man (1949)

IMDb 8.1 🍅 99% Letterboxd 4.2 1h 45m

Directed by Carol Reed

✦ MovieMuse AI takeCarol Reed's corkscrew camera angles and Harry Lime's shadow-play entrance redefine visual storytelling in postwar moral ambiguity.

In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a "third man" present at the time of Harry's death, running into interference from British officer Major Calloway, and falling head-over-heels for Harry's grief-stricken lover, Anna.

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2
The Night of the Hunter poster

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

IMDb 8.0 🍅 93% Letterboxd 4.3 1h 33m

Directed by Charles Laughton

✦ MovieMuse AI takeCharles Laughton's expressionist visuals and the iconic night-river sequence transform pulp into operatic nightmare.

In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.

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3
Le Samouraï poster

Le Samouraï (1972)

IMDb 8.0 🍅 92% Letterboxd 4.2 1h 45m

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

✦ MovieMuse AI takeMelville's glacial precision and geometric compositions elevate the hitman procedural into existential meditation on isolation.

After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.

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4
In the Heat of the Night poster

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

IMDb 7.9 🍅 96% Letterboxd 4.0 1h 49m

Directed by Norman Jewison

✦ MovieMuse AI takeSidney Lumet grounds noir morality in systemic racism, making social injustice the true criminal force.

African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.

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5
Broadway Danny Rose poster

Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

IMDb 7.4 🍅 100% Letterboxd 3.8 1h 24m

Directed by Woody Allen

✦ MovieMuse AI takeWoody Allen's black-and-white cinematography and framing device perfectly capture noir's visual fatalism while subverting the genre's moral certainties.

A hapless talent manager named Danny Rose, by helping a client, gets dragged into a love triangle involving the mob. His story is told in flashback, an anecdote shared amongst a group of comedians over lunch at New York's Carnegie Deli. Rose's one-man talent agency represents countless incompetent entertainers, including a one-legged tap dancer, and one slightly talented one: washed-up lounge singer Lou Canova, whose career is on the rebound.

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6
Odds Against Tomorrow poster

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

IMDb 7.4 🍅 88% Letterboxd 3.8 1h 36m

Directed by Robert Wise

✦ MovieMuse AI takeRobert Wise interrogates noir's racial mythology through the heist framework, exploding genre conventions.

An old-time crook plans a heist. When one of his two partners is found out to be a black man tensions flare.

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7
99 River Street poster

99 River Street (1953)

IMDb 7.4 🍅 100% Letterboxd 3.7 1h 23m

Directed by Phil Karlson

✦ MovieMuse AI takeRaoul Walsh captures the boxer's desperation through cramped taxi interiors and entrapment by circumstance.

A former boxer turned taxi driver earns the scorn of his nagging wife and gets mixed up with jewel thieves.

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8
Detour poster

Detour (1945)

IMDb 7.3 🍅 98% Letterboxd 3.8 1h 8m

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

✦ MovieMuse AI takePoverty and mischance conspire to destroy an innocent man—the quintessential noir premise executed with relentless inevitability and fatalistic atmosphere.

The life of Al Roberts, a pianist in a New York nightclub, turns into a nightmare when he decides to hitchhike to Los Angeles to visit his girlfriend.

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9
The Man with the Golden Arm poster

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

IMDb 7.3 🍅 81% Letterboxd 3.7 1h 59m

Directed by Otto Preminger

✦ MovieMuse AI takeAddiction and social corruption explored through visual darkness; drum set symbolizes impossible redemption in postwar America.

When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to get honest work as a drummer. But when his former employer and his old drug dealer re-enter his life, Frankie finds it hard to stay clean and eventually finds himself succumbing to his old habits.

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10
Kansas City Confidential poster

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

IMDb 7.3 🍅 79% Letterboxd 3.7 1h 40m

Directed by Phil Karlson

✦ MovieMuse AI takeFritz Lang's obsessive framing traps both victim and detective in inescapable visual geometry.

An ex-convict sets out to uncover who framed him for an armored car robbery.

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11
Dead End poster

Dead End (1937)

IMDb 7.2 🍅 83% Letterboxd 3.6 1h 33m

Directed by William Wyler

✦ MovieMuse AI takeSternly lit tenement streets and desperate characters converge in a single day, exemplifying noir's claustrophobic urban landscape and social determinism.

The lives of a young man and woman, an infamous gangster and a group of street kids converge one day in a volatile New York City slum.

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12
Woman on the Run poster

Woman on the Run (1950)

IMDb 7.2 🍅 88% Letterboxd 3.7 1h 17m

Directed by Norman Foster

✦ MovieMuse AI takeThe wife's agency and independence subvert femme fatale tropes while maintaining noir's paranoid atmosphere.

Frank Johnson, a sole witness to a gangland murder, goes into hiding and is trailed by Police Inspector Ferris, on the theory that Frank is trying to escape from possible retaliation. Frank's wife, Eleanor, suspects he is actually running away from their unsuccessful marriage. Aided by a newspaperman, Danny Leggett, Eleanor sets out to locate her husband. The killer is also looking for him, and keeps close tabs on Eleanor.

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13
Hell Drivers poster

Hell Drivers (1957)

IMDb 7.2 🍅 83% Letterboxd 3.5 1h 48m

Directed by Cy Endfield

✦ MovieMuse AI takeKen Mackintosh channels working-class corruption and moral compromise through the trucking noir subgenre.

An ex-con trying to go clean ends up working for a crooked trucking company swindling money.

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14
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage poster

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

IMDb 7.1 🍅 85% Letterboxd 3.7 1h 36m

Directed by Dario Argento

✦ MovieMuse AI takeDario Argento's giallo-noir fusion transforms the witness into unreliable narrator, destabilizing truth itself.

An American writer living in Rome witnesses an attempted murder that is connected to an ongoing killing spree in the city and conducts his own investigation, despite he and his girlfriend being targeted by the killer.

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15
Evil Under the Sun poster

Evil Under the Sun (1982)

IMDb 7.1 🍅 86% Letterboxd 3.5 1h 57m

Directed by Guy Hamilton

✦ MovieMuse AI takeThis is not film noir; it's a cozy mystery whodunit with no claim to the genre's visual or thematic conventions.

An opulent beach resort provides a scenic background to this amusing whodunit as Poirot attempts to uncover the nefarious evildoer behind the strangling of a notorious stage star.

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16
The Prowler poster

The Prowler (1951)

IMDb 7.1 🍅 100% Letterboxd 3.7 1h 33m

Directed by Joseph Losey

✦ MovieMuse AI takeCorrupt cop protagonist and L.A.'s nocturnal landscapes create noir's signature moral ambiguity where law enforcement itself becomes the criminal threat.

Los Angeles, California. A cop who, unhappy with his job, blames others for his work problems, is assigned to investigate the case of a prowler who stalks the home of a married woman.

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17
Farewell, My Lovely poster

Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

IMDb 7.0 🍅 76% Letterboxd 3.5 1h 35m

Directed by Dick Richards

✦ MovieMuse AI takeChandler's world-weary detective navigates shadowy L.A. corruption with jaundiced eyes, embodying noir's quintessential private eye archetype and cynical worldview.

Private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by ex-con Moose Malloy to find his girlfriend, a former lounge dancer. While also investigating the murder of a client and the theft of a jade necklace, Marlowe becomes entangled with seductress Helen Grayle and discovers a web of dark secrets that are better left hidden.

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18
Lured poster

Lured (1947)

IMDb 7.0 🍅 100% Letterboxd 3.5 1h 42m

Directed by Douglas Sirk

✦ MovieMuse AI takeWartime London fog and a female protagonist drawn into murder investigation subvert noir's male-dominated tradition while maintaining genre's dark atmosphere.

Sandra Carpenter is a London-based dancer who is distraught to learn that her friend has disappeared. Soon after the disappearance, she's approached by Harley Temple, a police investigator who believes her friend has been murdered by a serial killer who uses personal ads to find his victims. Temple hatches a plan to catch the killer using Sandra as bait, and Sandra agrees to help.

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19
Impact poster

Impact (1949)

IMDb 7.0 🍅 71% Letterboxd 3.2 1h 51m

Directed by Arthur Lubin

✦ MovieMuse AI takeThe moral inversion premise—victim staging his own murder to frame his wife—demonstrates noir's fascination with identity reversal and psychological complexity.

After surviving a murder attempt, an auto magnate goes into hiding so his wife can pay for the crime.

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20
He Ran All the Way poster

He Ran All the Way (1951)

IMDb 7.0 🍅 88% Letterboxd 3.5 1h 17m

Directed by John Berry

✦ MovieMuse AI takeJohn Berry's intimate confinement and doomed tenderness anticipate noir's psychological claustrophobia.

A crook on the run hides out in an innocent girl's apartment.

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21
Blackmail poster

Blackmail (1929)

IMDb 6.9 🍅 88% Letterboxd 3.4 1h 26m

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

✦ MovieMuse AI takeHitchcock's early blackmail thriller establishes noir's visual vocabulary—shadows, complicity, psychological coercion—before the term itself was codified.

London, 1929. Frank Webber, a very busy Scotland Yard detective, seems to be more interested in his work than in Alice White, his girlfriend. Feeling herself ignored, Alice agrees to go out with an elegant and well-mannered artist who invites her to visit his fancy apartment.

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22
The Hitch-Hiker poster

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

IMDb 6.9 🍅 94% Letterboxd 3.5 1h 11m

Directed by Ida Lupino

✦ MovieMuse AI takeRobert Aldrich's Darwinian brutality—the hitchhiker as pure sociopathic force—defines postwar noir paranoia.

Roy and Gilbert's fishing trip takes a terrifying turn when the hitchhiker they pick up turns out to be a sociopath on the run from the law. He's killed before, and he lets the two know that as soon as they're no longer useful, he'll kill again. The two friends plot an escape, but the hitchhiker's peculiar physical affliction, an eye that never closes even when he sleeps, makes it impossible for them to tell when they can make a break for it.

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23
The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh poster

The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971)

IMDb 6.9 Letterboxd 3.6 1h 36m

Directed by Sergio Martino

✦ MovieMuse AI takeGiallo melodrama with psychological obsession, not film noir; lacks noir's hard-boiled fatalism and instead emphasizes baroque visual excess.

When socialite and heiress Julie Wardh begins receiving blackmail letters attributed to a mysterious serial killer, she suspects her cruel and sadistic former lover Jean is behind them. With her husband Neil frequently out of town, she falls into the arms of her friend's cousin George, and as the unknown assassin begins to make his move, she fears that one of the three men in her life may be the killer.

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24
Dressed to Kill poster

Dressed to Kill (1946)

IMDb 6.8 🍅 83% Letterboxd 3.2 1h 12m

Directed by Roy William Neill

✦ MovieMuse AI takePost-war British thriller lacking noir's American urban corruption; plot-driven spy mechanics override the genre's morally compromised character studies.

A convicted thief in Dartmoor prison hides the location of the stolen Bank of England printing plates inside three music boxes. When the innocent purchasers of the boxes start to be murdered, Holmes and Watson investigate.

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25
Suddenly poster

Suddenly (1954)

IMDb 6.8 🍅 100% Letterboxd 3.3 1h 17m

Directed by Lewis Allen

✦ MovieMuse AI takeLewis Allen weaponizes small-town Americana, revealing noir darkness beneath picket-fence veneer.

The tranquility of a small town is marred only by sheriff Tod Shaw's unsuccessful courtship of widow Ellen Benson, a pacifist who can't abide guns and those who use them. But violence descends on Ellen's household willy-nilly when the U.S. President passes through town... and slightly psycho hired assassin John Baron finds the Benson home ideal for an ambush.

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26
The Blue Gardenia poster

The Blue Gardenia (1953)

IMDb 6.8 🍅 85% Letterboxd 3.4 1h 29m

Directed by Fritz Lang

✦ MovieMuse AI takePeter Godfrey uses fragmented memory and blackout drinking as structural devices—amnesia as narrative engine.

Upon waking up to the news that the man she’d gone on a date with the previous night has been murdered, a young woman with only a faint memory of the night’s events begins to suspect that she murdered him while attempting to resist his advances.

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27
The Big Knife poster

The Big Knife (1955)

IMDb 6.8 🍅 91% Letterboxd 3.4 1h 51m

Directed by Robert Aldrich

✦ MovieMuse AI takeRobert Aldrich exposes Hollywood's studio system as organized crime, collapsing noir and industry critique.

Movie star Charlie Castle draws the ire of Hollywood producer Stanley Hoff when he refuses to sign a new seven-year contract. Castle is sick of the low quality of the studio's films and wants to start a new life. While his estranged wife supports him in the decision, Castle's talent agent urges him to reconsider. When Castle continues to be uncooperative, Hoff resorts to blackmail in order to get his way.

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28
The Man Who Cheated Himself poster

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)

IMDb 6.8 🍅 100% Letterboxd 3.4 1h 21m

Directed by Felix E. Feist

✦ MovieMuse AI takeJoseph H. Lewis's dual-brother dynamic internalizes noir's moral corruption within institutional loyalty.

A veteran homicide detective who has witnessed his socialite girlfriend kill her husband sees his inexperienced brother assigned to the case.

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29
Terror by Night poster

Terror by Night (1946)

IMDb 6.7 🍅 75% Letterboxd 3.2 1h 0m

Directed by Roy William Neill

✦ MovieMuse AI takeHolmes adventure serial, not noir; lacks the genre's deterministic fatalism, compromised protagonists, and visual chiaroscuro aesthetic entirely.

Holmes and Watson board a passenger train bound from London to Edinburgh, to guard the Star of Rhodesia, an enormous diamond worth a fortune belonging to an elderly woman of wealth; but within the first hour of the trip, the woman's son is murdered and the diamond stolen and any of the passengers in their car could be the killer thief.

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30
My Favorite Brunette poster

My Favorite Brunette (1947)

IMDb 6.7 🍅 75% Letterboxd 3.3 1h 27m

Directed by Elliott Nugent

✦ MovieMuse AI takeSelf-aware genre parody that plays detective-fantasy against private-eye tropes, undermining noir's serious cynicism through knowing comedic deflation.

Ronnie Jackson is a lowly baby photographer who secretly fantasizes about being a private detective. When a lovely baroness actually mistakes him for one and asks him to help locate her missing husband, Baron Montay, Ronnie finds himself agreeing. Several days later he is on death row whiling away the hours until his execution by recounting to a group of reporters the bizarre tale of how he ended up there.

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