Who doesn’t love a good heist movie? There’s action, double- and triple-crosses, and, of course, a big cast of irresistibly cool leading men. Films from “Heat” to “The Italian Job” have found a way to make even the grimiest characters fascinating, and sometimes even lovable. Plus, the audience can’t resist a band of brothers going in for one last score.
In films like “Reservoir Dogs,” “The Usual Suspects,” and “Ocean’s Eleven,” we’re not rooting for every law-breaker to get caught the way we might in a thriller about a serial murderer. When quick-talking thieves are planning every minute detail involved in tripping the security and fooling the cops, we can’t help but hope they’ll get away with it — or, if they fail, to do so in the most dramatic, guns-blazing, action-packed way possible.
This weekend’s “Ocean’s Thirteen,” adds another action-packed caper to the list. The third installment of the “Ocean’s” franchise brings back the gang (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Co.) in all their slick, well-dressed and quick-witted glory to steal money from a loathsome casino owner (Al Pacino). “Thirteen” hopes to breach record sales, along with the vaults. Which gives us an excuse to run down other great heist movies of the past.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
In Sidney Lumet’s brilliant bank-robbery drama, based on an actual incident, Al Pacino plays a thief with a purpose beyond money — to rob a bank to pay for his lover’s operation. His plan is so half-baked that it becomes a media circus: Attica State!
The Great Train Robbery (1979)
Also based on a true story. The movie’s tagline: Never have so few taken so much from so many. Set in Victorian England, Sean Connery plays the brains behind a moving-target robbery to steal a shipment of gold from a moving train. He and his partner in crime need wax impressions of keys, coffins, dead cats and a great deal of planning in order to pull it off.
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
In Quentin Tarantino’s debut, the boss hires a team of crooks to pull off a diamond store heist. When it goes down, the cops arrive too fast. Later, while hiding in a nearby warehouse, the team — including Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel — tries to figure out who ratted them out.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
After a group of cons are assembled for a police lineup, they conspire for a big score ($91 million worth of cocaine). In between, they speak of the near-mythical crime lord Keyser Soze. When the cocaine heist goes horribly wrong, only a limping snitch named Verbal (Kevin Spacey) is around to tell the story.
Heat (1995)
Michael Mann directs. Meticulous bank robber Robert De Niro goes mano a mano with obsessed cop Al Pacino. In the opening, the bandits stage a dramatic armored car robbery. But Neil McCauley (De Niro) decides he will do one more heist — an L.A. bank — before retiring to New Zealand. The supporting cast includes Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman and Jeremy Piven. One of the greatest — and longest — shoot-outs in movie history.
Snatch (2000)
Guy Ritchie’s comedy about a group of colorful Irish guys who are up to no good. After a diamond is stolen by Frankie Four Fingers (Benecio del Toro), several groups try to snatch the rock for themselves. Brad Pitt stars as a vagabond boxer who knocks out a boxer who was supposed to take a dive for two shady promoters.
The Score (2001)
A classy, tense, constantly engrossing modern film noir about the clockwork heist of a $30 million royal scepter from Montreal’s Customs House. Marlon Brando is Max, the crime boss who pairs Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) and Jack Teller (Edward Norton). To get inside information, Jack poses as a disabled janitor at a customs house. Meanwhile, Nick plans to get out of the business after one more heist. Alas, Jack turns out to be less than a team player.
Oceans Eleven (2001)
This all-star remake of the 1960 Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin-Sammy Davis Jr. Las Vegas heist movie — directed by Steven Soderbergh with laid-back grace and an air of cunning corruption — is an elegant, slick, pleasingly shallow entertainment full of people we like to watch (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle) doing things a lot of us might like to do, if we were only that good-looking, resourceful and crooked.
The Italian Job (2003)
A flashy, gaudy, often very exciting remake of the 1969 Peter Collinson heist-chase thriller, with Michael Caine and a memorable Turin traffic jam. The movie starts (with a bang) in Venice and shifts the traffic heist to L.A., where Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Mos Def and company have gone for revenge on the ex-gang member who shafted them on the Italian job.
Inside Man (2006)
Spike Lee’s most commercial and entertaining movie to date — about a bank heist gone right, for once — still manages to pack in plenty of the director’s trademark idiosyncrasies and social commentary. A super cool mastermind (Clive Owen) engineers a Manhattan bank hit conducted in broad daylight, but once the crooks are in, they don’t seem interested in stealing the money. Hostage negotiator Det. Frazier (Denzel Washington) is trying to figure out what and why.
