The Bank Job (2008)
Inspired by the infamous 1971 robbery that took place at the Lloyds Bank in Marylebone London, The Bank Job stars Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows. The highly-charged heist thriller tautly interweaves high-level corruption, murder and sexual scandal in 1970s England.
Inception (2010)
The absolute modern classic heist movie, this one blew me away and is sure to stand the test of time. Christopher Nolan directs this epic where the heist takes place inside dreams.
DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a specialized corporate spy and thief. His work consists of secretly extracting valuable commercial information from the unconscious minds of his targets while they are asleep and dreaming. Wanted for murder and unable to visit his children, Cobb is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: “inception”, the planting of an original idea into a target’s subconscious.
The First Great Train Robbery – (1979)
The joy of this film is the time period in which it is set as Sean Connery plays a Victorian con man of sorts out for one hell of a major heist as he has his eyes set on 25,000 pounds of gold bars, which are securely confined inside a four-key safe aboard a moving train. As the plot is rolled out, and Connery and his partner played by Donald Sutherland begin copying the well guarded keys you begin to respect the level they go to obtain their anonymity and innocence
Heat (1995)
Michael Mann’s 1995 teaming of screen legends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino is a heist film at its core, but it is also so much more. It’s a cop thriller, a romance drama and a shoot ‘em up all wrapped up into one hell of a film that only gets better with repeated viewings. The opening take of the armored truck is a classic, the botched heist in the middle is a fantastic moment of supreme tension and the ultimate shoot out in the streets of Los Angeles at the end is one of the best ever shot on film.
Thomas Crown Affair (McQueen 1968)
The greatest of heist movies sees king of cool Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway falling in love across the thin blue line of the law. McQueen’s smooth burglar plans One Last Job, Dunaway is the insurance investigator meant to put him behind bars. The sizzling sexual chemistry is aided by the steamiest chess game in film history. Superb soundtrack, super slick split screen storytelling! This is a true classic in the genre.
The Killing (1956) I love this fascinating scene from Stanley Kubrick’s second feature, “The Killing (1956), a powerful “noir” heist picture starring the wonderful Sterling Hayden. The dialog is dynamite stuff. David Mamet himself called this scene, “one of the great talk scenes in movies. The scene takes place in a New York City chess club, based on a place on 42nd St. that Kubrick (himself an avid chess player) used to hang out at. It was known as The Flea House. This scene is a between Johnny (Sterling Hayden), brains in the heist , and Maurice (Kola Kwariani) who is to be the brawn
