Crime Film and the City: Imagining Toronto through Entanglements of Place, Culture, and Crime

Abstract

ABSTRACT Crime films set in Toronto over the past two decades represent the city through a lens of crime and criminality and establish a cultural identity for it within the national imaginary. Drawing on material from interviews with key film directors as well as visual and narrative film analysis, this article traces three predominant images of Toronto: 1) a cold, prosperous, post-industrial center for a calculated, sophisticated pursuit of criminality; 2) a cosmopolitan, creative city where crime is akin to a craft; and 3) a multicultural metropolis of distinctive ethnic enclaves linked to criminal collectives. The analysis reveals how each image presents different facets of the global, post-industrial city, while drawing attention to its ambivalence. In these images, Toronto becomes a place where emerging cultural economies entwine with symbolic forms of criminal activity, new middle-class lifestyles have unintended criminal effects, and the promise of multicultural urbanism is dashed by the policing of incommensurable differences.