Often lauded as the greatest action movie ever made, and sometimes even the greatest Christmas movie ever made, Die Hard is also an absolutely fabulous cop movie. Rough and ready New York detective John McClane (Bruce Willis, of course) finds himself neck deep in trouble when he visits his estranged wife in her swanky LA office on the eve of a deadly heist. There’s even a pinch of buddy movie magic when McClane secures radio support from local beat cop Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson).

The whole archetype of the trigger-happy law enforcer may have its roots in the classic western, but in 1971 Dirty Harry gave it a ‘modern’ face and thus spawned a new sub-genre of reactionary cop movies. Clint Eastwood plays the titular Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan, whose taciturn nature and preference for an overpowered Smith & Wesson Model 29 pistol makes him the bane of San Francisco’s criminal fraternity. When a psychopathic sniper starts killing innocents and making ransom demands, Harry sets to work.

Michael Mann’s epic 1995 crime thriller Heat may run to almost three hours, but its central premise can be boiled down to a very simple phrase: super cop vs master criminal. The former is played by Al Pacino, all wide-eyed swagger and unpredictable cadence. The latter is played by Robert DeNiro in full measured intensity mode. The beauty of Mann’s film, aside from it featuring at least two all-time great scenes, is that you still won’t be sure who you should have been rooting for as the end credits roll.

Seven stands as a perfect illustration of the genre-straddling potential of the cop movie. It’s part police procedural, part dark thriller, and part ghoulish horror flick, as well as being an early calling card for director David Fincher’s grimy signature style. The movie starts out with the classic cop movie set-up of a wily vet (Morgan Freeman) and a hot-headed rookie (Brad Pitt) hot on the trail of a serial killer (Kevin Spacey), but it rapidly descends into altogether darker and more twisted territory.

Here’s the movie that introduced us to wise-cracking Detroit cop Axel Foley, played in inimitable style by Eddie Murphy. At the outset of the film, Murphy’s character goes rogue in California following his friend’s murder. It’s tempting to call Beverly Hills Cop ‘classic fish-out-of-water stuff’, except for the fact Murphy’s ‘fish’ is never in anything other than complete control of the situation, with a ready supply of both quips and cunning.