Heists

[mkb]

My favorite heist film is the French Rififi. The actual heist is an incredibly tense half-hour of film with no dialog and very little sound. I like this one especially because it's very clear throughout that the only redemption for crime is death, no matter what else you do to atone.

Tell me some others. I want to compare!

[grady]

Here are a few more heisty type films that I really like:

Le Cercle Rouge(The Red Circle) written and directed Jean-Pierre Melville.

Bob le Flambeur also written and directed Jean-Pierre Melville.

The Wages of Fear directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. While not quite a heist film, it's an incredibly intense action film that was remade in the 1970's by William Friedkin titled, Scorcerer.

Heat written and directed by Michael Mann. Contains the huge bank heist in the film that goes on for about ten minutes. But there is also the wonderful opening sequence with the taking of the armored truck by Neil McCalluy and Crew.

[mkb]

Heat written and directed by Michael Mann. Contains the huge bank heist in the film that goes on for about ten minutes. But there is also the wonderful opening sequence with the taking of the armored truck by Neil McCalluy and Crew.

Oh, how could I forget that one? It even has Natalie Portman!

[Tyler]

The original Italian Job! It has benny hill as a proto-hacker (in the 70's!!!!) it has mini's driving around the Fiat 500 factory! It has a BEAUTIFUL Lambo Muria gettting destroyed :( X 100000 Silly and fun.

[grady]

A few more I just remembered:

Sneakers starring Robert Redford and Ben Kingsly and directed by Phil Alden Robinson. This movie is a bit old and dated, but a whole lot of fun involving cat and mouse cames and cryptography.

The Killing directed by Stanley Kubrick. This is a fucking great film about the robbing of a race track. It was made in 1956 before Paths of Glory, Lolita,and Dr. Strangelove. Sterling Hayden is amazing in this film as he is in the work he's done with Kubrick.

The Asphalt Jungle directed by John Huston. Another film starring Sterlin Hayden that is a dark gritty, noirish piece made in 1950. A major heist is pulled off and then things go awry.

The Good Thief written and directed by Neil Jordan and starring Nick Nolte. This was a remake/reinterpretation of Jean Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flambeur. When the film was released in 2003 not too many people caught the film, but it was really quite good.

Thief. Michael Mann's first film from 1981 starring James Caan as a memeber of a Chicago group of safe crackers. Definently worth a viewing. Mann hired actually crews that had been involved in many jobs to train the actors and give the film an authentic, realistic feel.

[b.miller]

I love heist movies. I've always been a fan of (excluding those already mentioned):


The Great Train Robbery: Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland heisting a steam engine train in victorian London

The Sting: Paul Newman and Robert Redford conning Robert Shaw out of mad duckets. maybe this is more a con movie than a heist movie... i dunno, it walks the line

Dead Presidents: iconic white-face-painted dudes heisting an armored truck.

Odds Against Tomorrow: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, and Ed Begley (not Jr.) heist a small-town bank but Ryan's racism mucks things up.

a sentimental favorite: Disorganized Crime: Lou Diamond Phillips, Fred Gwynne, Ruben Blades, et al. heist a small-town bank while Corbin Bernsen runs through the wilderness from cops Ed O'Neill and that other dude.

Reservoir dogs, even though the heist is offscreen.

And in a similar vein: Kansas City Confidential, where the heist takes place right at the beginning and the movie is about a guy who was wrongly accused for it hunting down the dudes who did it. It's even more interesting though because all the bad guys meet up in mexico for their payout but only the mastermind knows who they all are (since they wore masks for the whole time during the actual heist), so you get a lot of play and tension with all these tough types (Lee Van CLeef and Jack Elam included) as they slink around this placesuspicious of everybody. Well worth hunting down.

oh and the remake of Ocean's Eleven as well. pretty slick heisting action there.

[Animal Boything]

Raising Arizona