It's strange that one of the most critically acclaimed crime writers, Patrica Highsmith, has been behind a few brilliant films (Hitchcock's classic Strangers on a Train; the late Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley; Wim Wenders's The American Friend, an adaptation of Ripley's Game), but also a host of average ones.

Elmore Leonard found his perfect foil with Quentin Tarantino, the director's love of interspersing laid-back talky scenes with kinetic violence matching the writer's similarly paced prose in Jackie Brown. But others have been just as successful - 1995's Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld) and 1998's Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh) were box-office hits, the latter launching George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez (right).

You have to look farther back for genuine stars in a decent Raymond Chandler film - but you get more words out of them, and at greater speed. Chandler's novels were adapted in the age of the speed-talking screwball comedy. Howards Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946) was the best, with Bogart as the quintessential Marlowe.

Chandler will be equally remembered for his screenplays, both original (Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity) and adapted (Strangers on a Train for Hitchcock).

With his first film appearing in 1998 (in the form of the James Woods-starring Cop), James Ellroy's telegraphic writing style (which often reduces the plot to a virtual shorthand) requires careful directorial handling. Subsequent films have veered between a morally murky critical smash (LA Confidential in 1997, directed by Curtis Hanson) to an incomprehensible mess (Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia in 2006).

His latest work can also be seen in the screenplay for Street Kings - released yesterday - which, almost impressively, manages to combine the two.

Stuart McGurk is film editor of thelondonpaper

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