Heist Movies, Definitively Ranked

Copyright gq

Some movie genres are elusive and hard-to-define in ways that invite all sorts of debate. But not heist movies. Do they steal something? Does the film quite significantly feature a big elaborate plan and the attempted execution of said plan to steal something? If yes, you’ve got yourself a heist movie. The first examples appeared in the early 50s, as the noir film began its decline, and were thus infused with many of the shady, shadowy hallmarks of that genre. Since then, heists have become the engine of some of the pre-eminent action and crime films of our times, with a compelling combination of intelligence, tension and action that has proven reliably popular with audiences and, at their best, with critics as well. You’ve probably seen loads of OK heist movies, some bad heist movies, and a few really good heist movies—but we’re interested in the cream of the crop here. Nothing but the very finest in cinematic heisting. So what are they? Read on below to find out. 10) The Italian Job (1969) Michael “You Were Only Supposed to Blow the Bloody Doors Off” Caine stars as Cockney wrongun Charlie Croker in this tale of a rag-tag bunch of misfits hatching a plan to steal—what else?—a load of gold bars, from a security van transporting them through Turin. As well as an all-timer car chase and a beautifully haphazard cast of characters, there’s a sort of benevolent plucky-Brit spirit to the whole thing that’ll win you over with a wink and a nudge of the elbow. And the ending… well. It’s worth getting to just to have an argument over. 9) Logan Lucky (2017) Just like its protagonists, Logan Lucky is the sort of film you could easily underestimate – but do so at your peril. Down-on-their-luck West-Virginian brothers Adam Driver and Channing Tatum hatch a plan to ransack their local racetrack, with the help of local bomb-building virtuoso Daniel Craig (who happens to be imprisoned at the beginning of the film—anyone smell a bonus breakout heist?). So right there you’ve got three of the most fun-to-watch men in Hollywood strutting mesmerically along the line between silly and serious, and then they’re marshalled along that line by the high priest of heists himself, Steven Soderbergh. It’s a hoot. 8) Die Hard (1988) Unusual in that we’re following the guy trying to stop the heist (Bruce Willis) instead of the guys trying to execute it, but that doesn’t make it not a heist film and it certainly doesn’t detract from the tension that builds around the question of whether or not they’re actually going to pull off their plan. In this case, it's an attempt to steal millions from a high-rise building’s vault by taking a load of hostages in the building. There’s a reason so many people love this film so much, and it’s probably a lot to do with Willis’s old-school American Family Man macho charm. He’s a salt-of-the-earth hero, and rooting for him is a real good time indeed. 7) Inception (2010) In heist films, they’re usually after money. Maybe gold. Maybe some jewellery or something. In Inception, they’re going after thoughts. Hell yeah! In a typically Nolan-esque plot you’ll have to do some squinting and chin-scratching to wrap your head around, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb is hired to implant the idea in an energy mogul’s head that he should break up his company. This involves infiltrating dreams, and then dreams within dreams, and layers of consciousness, and… it all sort of makes you feel like your brain’s spinning round in your head a bit, but in a good way. Honestly. Like, a really really good way. 6) Ocean’s Eleven (2001) Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon and more bring to life one of the all-time classics of the genre, which is a remake of the Rat Pack-starring 60s original about a fantastically elaborate attempt to rob a casino. Given what else Steven Soderbergh was making at the time, this feels like something that was meant to be more of a “let’s do a silly one now, just for fun”, but got such a stacked cast that it ended up being a pretty sublime bit of high-end heisting. The fizzing dialogue between heisters their believability as slick-handed engineers of such an audacious theft will keep you more than sufficiently absorbed for one of the quicker two-hour stints of your life. 5) Heat (1995) An epic, three-hour whirlwind of a film in which Al Pacino (the cop) stalks Robert De Niro (the crook) around LA like a lion hunting another, supremely elusive lion. Nighttime LA looks more beautiful than it has any right to in what is essentially a cop caper, and director Michael Mann’s treatment of the subject matter expands the genre fascinatingly into questions of how people on each side of the law try and fail to separate their day jobs from their lives and families. It’s a feverish, relentless race of a film—oh, and it’s got one of the greatest heist sequences you’ll ever see right at the start. 4) Reservoir Dogs (1992) Not many filmmakers who aren’t Quentin Tarantino have managed to squeeze moments of such philosophical anti-profundity (little arguments like the one over Mr. Pink’s approach to tipping) between moments of such overt and unashamed violence (pretty much everything else). In a choppy non-chronological narrative, we get a picture of a heist that’s gone wrong, and an attempt to establish which of the surviving criminals—who find themselves stuck in a warehouse with each other—might be the rat that’s undermined the whole operation. 3) Out of Sight (1998) Adapt Elmore Leonard’s writing for the screen and there’s a pretty good chance it’ll go well. Jackie Brown, Justified, and 3:10 to Yuma are evidence of that, and Out of Sight is too. It tracks a developing romance between a bank robber (George Clooney) and the federal marshal he kidnaps (Jennifer Lopez), who then tries to sort of kidnap him back. That’s a fun, spicy situation, but this being Soderbergh, what it’s still all really about is people. It’s not crime for crime’s sake, but crime because crime is a great way of interrogating human behaviour. Or, if you just like an exciting crime film, then it’s crime for crime’s sake. Everybody wins! 2) The Killing (1956) A little like Soderbergh's relationship with his heist films, The Killing feels a little like Stanley Kubrick showing audiences that he could also wipe the floor with his contemporaries doing an incredibly beautiful version of the more formulaic stuff. A racetrack is the setting here for a positively aerodynamic heist tale, in which a career criminal goes for the age-old “one last job” before hitting the straight and narrow and marrying his fiancée. Said fiancée, however, has her own plans—and a gloriously rendered mess ensues. As with any Kubrick, it’s simply a series of images that are an absolute joy to look at, and for an extra special bonus, there’s a whole thrilling heist thing going on too! 1) Rififi (1955) Somebody say jewel heist? Fresh out of prison, Tony gets pulled into a high-stakes robbery of some seriously high-value items. This leads to a sumptuously cinematic 33-minute, dialogue-free heist sequence, which has probably influenced every other film on this list. What follows is an artful, noir-laden exposition of the mess of interaction between erratic, highly-charged characters and the pressures of the situation they’ve put themselves in, with dramatic consequences for each of them. It doesn’t have the heightened everything-just-goes-right sheen of so many of the aforementioned films, but what it has instead is a meticulous attention to detail that allows you to both understand and feel part of what’s going on as if you’re there yourself, and also comprehend the very real drama and danger inherent to such criminal plotting. Simply a masterwork of heist filmmaking. This story originally appeared in British GQ.