The audacious 2025 robbery of The Louvre was so outlandish that it seemed like it was dreamt up by Hollywood screenwriters. And indeed, many of the most famous heist movies, like “Bonnie and Clyde,” are based on real events. But the enduring allure of the get-rich-quick scheme means that films based on elaborate heists will always find an audience. These movies let directors use the medium to offer social commentary on inequality and injustice or simply give viewers a few hours of escape from reality.
‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967)
Bonnie And Clyde (1967) Official Trailer #1 - Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway Movie - YouTube
Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) are the glamorous outlaws based on the true story of the bank-robbing, kidnapping duo that terrorized the Dust Bowl between 1932 and 1934. Bonnie is a waitress who falls in with small-time criminal Clyde, as they set off a multi-state crime spree that was front-page national news.
The movie was instrumental in loosening Hollywood’s restrictions on the depiction of sex and violence, and their hail-of-bullets death scene at the movie’s end was both graphic and iconic. A “work of truth and brilliance,” the film is a “milestone in the history of cinema” that is “pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking and astonishingly beautiful,” said Roger Ebert when the film first came out. (Prime)
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The “granddaddy of all heist-gone-wrong films,” director Sidney Lumet’s masterpiece “grants the audience permission to enjoy criminal shenanigans and to identify with the perpetrators without condoning them,” said Adam Smith at Empire. Al Pacino plays Sonny Wortzik, whose plan to rob the First Brooklyn Savings Bank with two of his friends to pay for his lover’s sex change surgery is botched and turns into a tense hostage situation with a police command center set up at a barber shop across the street. Loosely adapted from real events, Lumet’s tense film features a superb ensemble cast including bank employees and eventually Sonny’s lover, Leon (Chris Sarandon), who the cops put on the phone with Sonny to try to get him to relent. (HBO Max)
A rookie federal agent, Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), is partnered with a wise elder, Pappas (Gary Busey), to take down a group of bank robbers called the Ex-Presidents, named after their rubber-mask disguises of Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Johnson. The gang, led by Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) are surfers, so Utah goes undercover to infiltrate the gang, falls in love with Bodhi’s ex-girlfriend Tyler (Lori Petty) and gets in so deep that Pappas eventually doesn’t know who Utah is working for.
Director Kathryn Bigelow (whose new nuclear thriller “A House of Dynamite” is currently streaming on Netflix) delivers a “celebration not only of the spectacular pleasures of surfing and skydiving and chasing bank robbers” but also of the “remarkably visceral extremes that violence itself can achieve when orchestrated for the cinema,” said Philip Strick at Sight and Sound. (Netflix)
‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1992)
Reservoir Dogs (1992) Official Trailer #1 - Quentin Tarantino Movie - YouTube
Before he became one of the best-known directors in Hollywood with “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino helmed this ultraviolent, quip-filled movie about a diamond heist gone terribly wrong. Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi play the squabbling gang of pseudonymous robbers (dubbed Mr. White, Blonde, Orange and Pink, respectively). They all turn on each other after their plan goes violently awry.
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Told through perspectival flashbacks and featuring what would become Tarantino’s signature mode of pop-culture obsessed hit men and gangsters, “Reservoir Dogs” is a great heist movie. The characters “argue like coffee-shop philosophes” in a “remarkably disciplined feat of storytelling” that “pierces like a bullet, leaving a clean hole,” said Tom Shone at The New Yorker. (PlutoTV)
‘Die Hard With a Vengeance’ (1995)
Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995) Trailer #1 - YouTube
A “very underrated entry in the franchise and a film that continues to be great fun whenever it’s revisited,” the third “Die Hard” film is an elaborate bait-and-switch whose “pace is set so frenetically that we don’t have time to worry about pesky action movie buzzkills like logic and plausibility,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) has hit rock bottom, with his life and marriage in tatters, when he is asked to respond to the demands of a seemingly mad bomber (Jeremy Irons). As McClane dashes from place to place responding to bomb threats around New York City, the real target comes into view: a daring heist of the Federal Reserve’s gold stash. (Disney+)
‘Set It Off’ (1996)
When bank teller Frankie (Vivica A. Fox) is accused of collaborating with a bank robber, she loses her job and teams up with her friends Stony (Jada Pinkett Smith), Cleo (Queen Latifah) and T.T. (Kimberly Elise) to pull off a series of Los Angeles-area bank robberies. Of course, their early success attracts the attention of law enforcement, and eventually leads to tragedy for several members of the group.
Featuring a classic, ’90s hip-hop soundtrack and tackling themes like poverty, racism and police violence, “Set It Off” is the rare heist movie with a serious message. A story about the “love felt between four Black women” who are “failed by everyone in their lives to an infuriating degree,” the film is a “hood classic,” said Najee AR Fareed at Tribe. (Prime)
Pure escapism, Steven Soderbergh’s remake of the Rat Pack classic was a vast improvement over the source material. George Clooney is Danny Ocean, a newly paroled mobster who puts together a team of criminals to lift $160 million from the vaults of three Vegas casinos. The star-studded heist squad includes Frank Catton (Bernie Mac), Linus (Matt Damon) and Ocean’s associate Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt). In addition to the financial motivation, Bellagio owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) is involved with Ocean’s ex-wife, Tess (Julia Roberts). As “each member’s role in the operation becomes a delicate composite of a seemingly foolproof master plan,” Soderbergh “wisely tones down the action for its megastar crew,” said Ed Gonzalez at Slant Magazine. (Prime)
‘Hell or High Water’ (2016)
HELL OR HIGH WATER - Official Trailer HD - YouTube
The premise of director David Mackenzie’s “Hell or High Water” is an economic recession parable. Two brothers, Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster), start robbing banks to save the family farm from foreclosure. Jeff Bridges is Marcus, the grizzled cop tasked with bringing them to justice and Gil Birmingham is Alberto, his deputy.
Both pairs are given inspired dialogue by “Sicario” writer Taylor Sheridan, which brings the plot’s mechanics into focus without clunky exposition. The action unfolds across the barren, economically depressed expanse of West Texas and Oklahoma, as the brothers target branches of Texas Midlands and ask their victims for small-denomination bills that can’t be traced. The film “expertly mixes jolts of violence with social awareness and a sense of life lived on the edge,” said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. (Paramount+)
David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics." He's a frequent contributor to Newsweek and Slate, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic and The Nation, among others.
