Free movie streaming service Tubi offers a ton of great movies, and while browsing the range recently I noticed that three of my all-time fave thrillers are on there.
Two are crime thriller classics, while the third is a finely crafted men-versus-the-problem disaster avoidance movie. I've seen all of these movies a ton of times – and Thief is actually part of our regular suite of films we use to test the best TVs because it's such a grainy, analog film and it's interesting to see how TVs handle that.
These are all rated strongly on Rotten Tomatoes too, but that didn't influence my selection – these are three movies I genuinely love, and who can resist them for free?
Unstoppable (2010)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 87%
Length: 94 minutes
Director: Tony Scott
A huge freight train full of explosive and toxic chemicals is left rolling while unattended by corner-cutting workers and soon starts to build up speed until, because of its speed and huge mass, there's no clear way to stop it. Unless Denzel Washington and Chris Pine can save the day…
This was the final movie from the great Tony Scott (Top Gun, True Romance) and it might be his best movie. It's just pure thrills, full of fast cutting, ridiculous camera moves along a giant moving train, complicated characters, and a healthy disdain for the management class who need to just get out of the way of our heroes and let them save the damn train.
It's a tight 94 minutes of gripping action, and it's so rewatchable – I've seen it many times, and it always hits. And if you want a tense train double-bill of free Tubi movies, I'd also recommend the excellent zombie horror Train to Busan.
Thief (1981)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 80%
Length: 122 minutes
Director: Michael Mann
Michael Mann's first movie ranks right up there with his best – the likes of Heat – in my opinion. It stars James Caan as a professional jewel thief who is very good and breaking into safes, and very bad at dealing with human beings. Mann makes the heists the most incredible viewing you've ever seen, even though they're super-realistic and mostly involve just drilling and torching – you could just watch them forever.
What really makes the movie is how complex Caan's character is. He's abrasive and deeply unpleasant at times, but it's also clear that he's broken and insecure inside, and he lives his life in a way designed to paint over these cracks – at least, until he meets Tuesday Weld and falls in love. To help build a better life with her, he breaks his working rules and gets involved with working for a mobster… who inevitably betrays him, and you know Caan is going scorched earth at that point.
I think Thief has one of the most interesting central characters in the world of crime thrillers, and it's both impossible grimy and extremely cool, as most of Michael Mann's movies are.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 87%
Length: 105 minutes
Director: Bryan Singer
This movie's legacy has been complicated by the allegations against director Bryan Singer and lead actor Kevin Spacey, but when it comes to the movie itself… what a picture. It follows a group of criminals who are brought together when they're rounded up by police, and who eventually come to realise they're being manipulated by someone powerful, who wants payback from them for crimes they accidentally pulled against him. This man is claimed to be Keyser Soze, an underworld legend who most assume is fictional – but his lawyer insists otherwise, and says he'll kill the people they love if they won't attack a rival drug-smuggling operation.
The story is told through flashbacks from the only survivor, Verbal Kint (Spacey), a fearful con man who's confessing all to the FBI. But as the movie builds, the FBI starts to question if they're getting all the information from him – was Verbal only seeing what he was meant to see?
And there is, of course, the infamous final twist. I'm going into spoiler territory now, so stop reading if you haven't seen the movie yet.
For real.
What makes this movie so rewatchable once you know the ending is working out which parts of Verbal's story are true and which aren't. Some of it logically must have happened as he told it, and some did not. How much do we think he really matches the stories of Keyser? You might change your mind on these things each time you watch it, which means it's always interesting to revisit.
