>> Speaker 1: [SOUND] The old pro assembles a rag tag band for
one last job before he retires.
The big score, the perfect crime, the double cross, these are our picks for
the top 10 movie heists of all time.
>> [SOUND]
>> Speaker 2: Recently I planned and
set in motion events to execute the perfect bank robbery.
>> Speaker 1: Starting us off at number 10, we're going big with one of modern
cinema's our tour director's take on a heist.
And that could mean David O Russell's Three Kings Gold Heist in the gulf war or
Wes Anderson's hilarious bumbling caper gone wrong from Bottle Rocket.
But probably not Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs,
which skips over the heist entirely to focus on its aftermath.
Instead, we're looking to Spike Lee's brilliant trickery from Inside Man.
We definitely don't want to give this one away.
So we won't talk much about the how.
But we will talk about the what and the why we picked it,
which is that seeing a director like Spike Lee take on an exciting and
different genre like Heist makes us giddy.
Of course he's gotta sent it in New York.
But it also means, we get the awesome dual perspective storytelling that comes with
the nonlinear interrogations and Clive Owen's voiceover.
Sure, The Heist is light on the planning, but it's heavy on the misdirection.
So we've gotta give it our first pick.
[SOUND] Next up at number nine,
we're looking way, way back to the very beginning and for
heist movies that's Edwin S Porter's 1903, The Great Train Robbery.
For most purposes movie heist are defined by detailed planning and team assembly.
Precise intricate execution of a specific criminal choreography and
a final reversal plot twister complication and the getaway.
But the key is that the crime itself is the center piece of the film.
It's what the movies actually about, not just something that's happening in
the meantime as two attractive actors make bedroom eyes and we all wait for
them to screw.
While the great train robbery hadn't yet developed the entire narrative
formula down to the planning, it was only ten minutes long.
It's definitely got the complex choreography involved in stealing a train,
robbing it's passengers, and decoupling the engine in order to make a get away.
It's far more mature then anything else of its time and
the very first movie ever to focus on the how of criminal activity,
which is why it's a must for any heist list.
>> Speaker 3: The soft spots an old steam tunnel, man holes on the corner.
>> Speaker 1: Moving forward to number eight,
we're looking at the first heist film to put it all together.
And after the great train robbery, crime films, and
the film noirs of the early 1900s were the main inspirations for the heist.
In the themes,
films like M and Les vampires gave us a glimpse of the criminal underworld.
While those like Raffles introduced us to this sympathetic thief.
Then by the 40s movies like High Sierra, Criss Cross,
and White Heat showed audiences a glimpse of what was to come.
Still light on the ever important planning segment but
heavy on the moving pieces intricacy of complex crimes.
And finally by the year 1950 it all came together in an awesome
criminal stew with our number nine, The Asphalt Jungle.
Where the heist film was really born.
A mastermind pitches a job and assembles a team.
They meet in a shady basement where he lays out the plan to the mi nute, and
then in a tense 11 minute sequence, they execute the plan, underground tunnels,
electric eyes, safe cracking, explosives.
The film has all the elements of what we now know as The Heist and it's for
a pretty good reason.
It pretty much created it.
>> Speaker 4: Let's play ball.
>> Speaker 1: Now the 60s where the golden age of heist films and
they're pretty much universally adored, so
it's no surprise that about a bajillion of them have been remade in recent years.
So for our number seven, our favorite heist remake comes from 1999's,
The Thomas Crown Affair.
As far as heists go, we're all about the great cast, the suspenseful moments, and
the intricate machinery of the crime, and
The Thomas Crown Affair has them in spades.
The remake has him robbing art from a museum as opposed to bank, which was new
for the genre, as well as a second heist where he puts the damn thing back.
All in all, Brosnan's clever trickery reminds us of,
if James Bond pulled off a heist but we just can't figure out why.
>> Speaker 5: Go.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 5: You're only suppose to
blow the bloody doors off.
>> Speaker 1: Of course, if we're gonna talk about remakes we better talk
about the original spooks.
Sure the original Thomas Crown affair open and close with clockwork bank robbery
sandwiching the sexiest chess game ever played in the middle.
And the red pack winter Vegas with the original Oceans 11 and
added some much needed lighthearted pass to the collection
culminating in an explosive glow in the dark set piece.
But for our pick, we're giving it to the original Italian Job
from Michael Cane's traffic jam gold bar mini cooper heist.
I want to pay special attention to the ending here, the literal cliffhanger where
it looks like they're not going to make it out with the gold after all.
You might notice, especially with older heist films,
that something almost always went wrong.
It's like there was a rule.
Well, there pretty much was.
You see, the censors were tough on crime, like McGruff or something.
Films of the Hays Code era were never allowed to show criminals getting
away with it.
So even though time rooting for
the bad guys The censorship law said that they couldn't keep the loop.
>> Speaker 6: You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
>> [MUSIC]
[SOUND] >> Speaker 1: At number five,
we're looking at what may be one of the most original heist films
ever conceived with 2010's Inception.
Yes Nolan got his heist start with The Dark Knight with a high octane clown caper
to start the movie off, but that doesn't even begin to stand up to Inception.
And while there isn't money or jewels to be had, all the tropes are there, one last
job, the old pro, the new protege, the hardest one yet, the perfect crime.
the twist, of course, is that the heist is taking place completely
Completely inside a character's brain.
But Nolan's genius about this, isn't he?
He constructs a totally fascinating way to physicalize the subconscious and
puts mental warfare on screen in the form of the perfect crime.
Talk about making the internal cinematic, genius.
>> Speaker 7: [FOREIGN]
>> Speaker 8: [FOREIGN]
>> Speaker 7: [FOREIGN]
>> Speaker 8: [FOREIGN] >> Speaker 7: [FOREIGN]
>> Speaker 1: Continuing down to number
four, we're looking at one of the early influential heist directors who left
a big impact on the genre.
But no,
it's not Stanley Kubrick, who's early The Killing is an oft forgotten classic.
Instead we're taking a look at Jean-Pierre Melville and
his chilling and gritty heist trilogy.
So for our number four, following up on his other classic heists,
like in Bob Le Flambeur, The Heist That Wasn't and Le Deuxieme Souffle,
a slick armored car knockoff, we're giving it to Le Cercle Rouge.
Clocking in at 25 tense minutes for the heist itself,
the jewel robbery is a monument to the genre.
With thieves sneaking in from two different directions,
dangling out the windows, cutting through glass, dodging about electric eyes,
and sharp-shooting out the alarm system, The Circle of Rouge gets it all right.
Sure, it's not quite as good as the heist that it draws most of it's
inspiration from.
A pick you'll find later on in our list but it's a late classic in the film noir
tradition and one of our favorites, which is why it gets our pick.
>> Speaker 9: Mr. Ocean, what do you think you would do if released?
>> Speaker 1: Next up at number three, we've got another remake, and probably
the iconic heist film of the modern era, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven.
Now sure, we love 13, and is there a number between 13 and 11?
I sure can't remember one.
But the first Cluny Oceans film is everything
wonderful about Hollywood commercial heist movies.
It's close to the perfect popcorn flick.
Soderbergh also does a wonderful job drawing on all that came before him.
The comedy and the banter of the 60s, The sleekness from the 90s, the intricacy and
tension of early film more heist and the cleverness of its later iterations.
Well not probably not blowing any minds by turning people on to Oceans 11.
Check out Sexy Beast if you want something awesome, you probably haven't seen.
>> Speaker 10: I am the last guy in the world that you want to [BLEEP] with.
>> Speaker 1: Okay. For our number two,
we're looking at the 80s, which were by the way very,
very slim as far as good heist films go.
But in 1981, thank God for Micheal Mann.
You probably know his heist best from Heat, which has an armored car knock off
that was so realistic, it inspired a bunch of real life happy gag criminals.
But Thief was his directorial debut.
And holy [BLEEP] he takes the heist film and flips it on it's head,
drags it onto the modern age and gives us a real glimpse of the future.
He breaks hard in the film noir tradition, the caper influences, the banter,
and the analog.
He's all electronic music, slick visuals, and gritty talk.
Wildly influential, Thief stands out as so unlike anything before it, and
so important to everything after it, that it has to make our list.
>> Speaker 11: [FOREIGN] >> Speaker 12: [FOREIGN]
>> Speaker 1: And finally at number one,
there's no better heist ever shot than the 30 minute sequence without either music or
dialogue from Jules Dassin's, Rififi.
Now, Jules Dassin was put on Hollywood's blacklist
in 1950 because of McCarthy-era suspicion of communist sympathy.
And while he struggled to find work for awhile,
he was eventually invited to adapt a crime novel in France.
This became Rififi.
Now, we've mentioned a few times the importance of the planning stages, and
Rififi is possibly the best example of why.
Yes, the heist itself is 30 minutes of nonstop tension
where I'm sure audiences of the era participated in a half hour long
collective clinching of their butt hole.
But it works because because Dassin's sets up how effective
the alarms sensor there is during their planning.
They make attempt after attempt to disable the thing and
learn how sensitive it is to sound.
In affect, sound becomes their enemy and
the audience becomes highly attuned to any noise our team make.
The heist is only as good as the planning sequence.
Where they set up both the rewards and the risks.
And no one is as more obvious than Rafifi, which is why it's our pick for
the best heist of all time.
[NOISE] So what do you think?
Do you disagree with our picks?
Did we leave out one of your favorite heists?
Let us know in the comments below and
be sure to subscribe for more Cinefix movie lists.
>> [MUSIC]
[SOUND