There are a lot of great movies that feature very believable romantic (and sexual) chemistry. In the Mood for Love! Moulin Rouge! Brokeback Mountain! Before Sunrise! Love and Basketball! Titanic! Anything with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks! Anything, honestly, with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson. But as I must keep reminding myself, this is a crime website, so please allow me to present to you a list of the THIRTY-SOMETHING best romantic chemistries in crime cinema.
It was a tough list, and I tried to define the categories as broadly as I could without making any controversial claims about crime-movie categorization. (IS While You Were Sleeping, a movie with *unreal* chemistry between its leads, a crime movie? Absolutely, but I don’t think it’s canon enough as such that I can put it on this list.) So, anyway…
These films are loosely ranked, roughly from “very good chemistry” to “nuclear fission.”
Away we go!
Christian Slater + Patricia Arquette in True Romance
With a title like that, you really can’t cast actors who will under-sell the love story, now can you?
Brad Pitt + Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Like me, you may not like that during the making of this movie, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie fell for one another even though Pitt was still married to Jennifer Aniston, but, case in point, you can’t deny that they seem really into one another when you watch it. Their pairing is… believable.
George Lazenby + Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Diana Rigg is one of the absolute best Bond girls ever in one of the secretly-best Bond movies ever, and her relationship with Lazenby’s Bond cuts much deeper than most of 007’s flings. You really believe that Bond wants to ditch the spy life and marry her at the end.
Martin Sheen + SIssy Spacek in Badlands
You really see the pull that these two have on another. I mean, look, the details of their love story—namely, their killing spree throughout South Dakota—might not be super advisable or, you know, normal. But all they have in the world is each other!
Jack Davenport + Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley
The sweetest thing in this vice of a movie is the instant harmony between Ripley and Peter Smith-Kingsley, a guy who just really likes him for who he is. (Instant harmony… except for a few big things.)
William Powell + Myrna Loy in The Thin Man
There’s a reason they made a million more of these movies, and it’s that Powell and Loy mix together better than gin and tonic.
Al Pacino + Ellen Barkin in Sea of Love
BookMarks editor-in-Chief Dan Sheehan reminded me to include this neo-noir from that weird period in Al Pacino’s career, and he was right. This film is like the Manhattan Project in 1942, in that it is very explosive and no one knows what you’re talking about when you say its name.
Naomi Watts + Laura Elena Harring in Mulholland Dr.
The way these two actresses hang on to one another, in every possible way, is almost unbelievable to behold.
Sharon Stone + Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct
I mean, you know the scene.
Laura Dern + Kyle McLaughlan in Blue Velvet
You could add Isabella Rosellini to this pairing and make it a love triangle, too; Kyle McLaughlan is very into all the young women in this movie.
Taraji P. Henson + Terrence Howard in Hustle & Flow
Before Empire, there was Hustle & Flow, the story about a pimp who wants to be a hip-hop emcee and the pregnant prostitute with incredible pipes with whom he falls in love. If you’ve seen Empire, you know what these two are capable of.
Claire Danes + Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet
Aye, pilgrim, you try telling me with a straight face that when you saw this in ninth grade, the chemistry between those two kids didn’t make your jaw drop.
Cary Grant + Ingrid Bergman in Notorious
I don’t have a lot of Hitchcock films on here because I don’t think any actor pairing “has chemistry” in the traditional way in a Hitchcock movie. But then there’s Notorious. Maybe this one isn’t really the world’s healthiest relationship (>cough< Deceit! >cough< Nazis!) but you don’t have to be a spy, or the daughter of a spy surveilling Nazi scientists, to locate the source of the film’s pervading magnetism.
Faye Dunaway + Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde
It’s kind of the ur-text for a list like this, don’t you think?
Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in A Most Violent Year
If you’ve seen that viral red-carpet video from the premiere of Scenes From a Marriage, you won’t be surprised that they have super believable chemistry in other things, too.
Jada Pinkett Smith + Jamie Foxx in Collateral
Collateral is just soaked in chemistry. Proportionally, most of the movie concerns the fantastic dynamic between cabbie Max (Foxx) and his hitman passenger Vincent (Tom Cruise), but the the sparkling, delightful connection between Max and a lawyer named Annie (Jada) during the dreamy ride in the film’s beginning, sets the whole film’s mood.
Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair
The conceit of The Thomas Crown Affair is that two of the cleverest minds in the world of art theft have met their match. This film represents the best sub-genre of both “romance” and “crime” cinema: the battle of wits.
Kim Min-hee + Kim Tae-ri in The Handmaiden
This Dickensian con artist thriller set in South Korea has one of the most impressively longing relationships ever put on film. It’s also a masterpiece.
Humphrey Bogart + Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep
Their shocking age difference notwithstanding, Bogart and Bacall can project a deep intimacy just by locking eyes and muttering sardonic lines.
Whitney Houston + Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard
You know how she sings the song “I will always love you?” with so much feeling? That’s from this movie. Now just apply that intensity to the central love story. THE WAY HE HOLDS HER.
Jeff Daniels + Melanie Griffith in Something Wild
This Jonathan Demme film starts out as a rom com about a straightlaced banker who meets “a free-spirited woman.” But then she kidnaps him! The whole time, though, they just click.
Faye Dunaway + Jack Nicholson in Chinatown
“Mrs. Mulwray, I think you’re hiding something.” There is nothing—nothing—like the chemistry between Jack Nicholson’s grimacing, determined PI and Faye Dunaway’s icy, restrained person-of-interest.
Gina Gershon + Jennifer Tilly in Bound
You watch it and realize that nothing in the world makes more sense than this relationship.
Peter O’Toole + Audrey Hepburn in How to Steal a Million
This movie has everything: clever art heists not completed for greed, delightful 60s Givenchy fashion, and Peter O’Toole’s azure blue eyes. I personally think that Audrey had better chemistry with Peter O’Toole than any of her other leading men. If you doubt this, watch the scene in which she sees Peter O’Toole for the first time, when he’s peeking out at her over the frame of the painting he’s stealing, and his eyes are super blue and when he puts it down it’s revealed he’s wearing a tuxedo and he’s extremely polite and funny… no better meet-cute in the history of cinema. Smoldering.
Jodie Turner-Smith + Daniel Kaluuya Queen & Slim
This movie is about a first date that turns into an on-the-lam story after our lovely protagonists are profiled by a cop. You’ve gotta trust that, although these two just met, they would still go to the ends of the earth for one another.
Kathleen Turner + Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone
This entry should win a special citation for its leads knowing how to spar perfectly. Nothing sets the stakes of cinematic romance better than two actors who know how to bicker. DON’T write us out of this one, Joan Wilder!!
James McAvoy + Kiera Knightley in Atonement
A tour-de-force of “longing.” The tension of that dinner scene!
Pam Grier + Robert Forster in Jackie Brown
The way Max Cherry and Jackie Brown even look at each other…
Sandra Bullock + Keanu Reeves in Speed
Remember how happy we all were when we found out that Sandy and Keanu actually both had crushes on one another during the making of this film? Well, it shows.
Kathleen Turner + William Hurt in Body Heat
I’ll let BookMarks Editor-in-Chief Dan Sheehan do the talking here: “Every time Hurt and Turner appear on screen together, clothed or otherwise, the titular heat could melt steel beams. Right from the jump they’ve got the kind of uninhibited, almost vulgar chemistry of two people who know exactly where things are headed. They’re wolfish with one another’s bodies, they way they eye and salivate and ultimately devour.”
Fred MacMurray + Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity
Phyllis’s mind-games aside (or maybe partially because of them), she and insurance investigator Walter Neff have such an unreal erotic energy it’s a miracle Will Hays’s Production Code didn’t censor the entire thing.
Cate Blanchett + Rooney Mara in Carol
I know everyone in the world is in love with Cate Blanchett, but those yearning, seductive looks between her and Rooney Mara could burn down that department store.
Humphrey Bogart + Lauren Bacall in To Have and To Have Not
I mean, they got married after this film. Shooting this whole movie was basically just them going on a bunch of DATES. Filming To Have and To Have Not is to Bogart and Bacall as “meeting up at that one McDonald’s” is to me and my boyfriend.
Eva Green + Daniel Craig in Casino Royale
The connection between Eva Green and Daniel Craig feels so genuine from the get-go, and then the movie just keeps adding layers of trust, vulnerability, gentleness, and care on top of it.
Jennifer Lopez + George Clooney in Out of Sight
There is no scene in the history of movies more charged than the one in which kidnapped U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco (peak J-Lo) and recently jail-broken bank robber Jack Foley (peak Clooney) are stuck in the trunk of a moving car together. I don’t make the rules. I just report them.
