5. ‘The Sting’ (1973)
Heist films aren’t all intricate machinations and moral retribution. Sometimes they’re just set-ups to really funny gags. It’s an oddball late-’80s diamondheist gem, headlined by John Cleese as a lawyer smitten with Jamie Lee Curtis’ con-artist, opposite a stuttering Michael Palin and Kevin Kline (in a rare comedic performance to land an Oscar win). And it’s one of the funniest things Cleese has done that isn’t under the moniker of Monty Python.
6. ‘Le Cercle Rouge’ (1970)
Nobody does gangster chic quite like the French, with their trench coats, slanted chapeaus and rainy Paris streets. And no French filmmaker made crime films quite like Jean-Pierre Melville. His existential jewel-heist film, in which three criminals execute an intricate theft, is shot with a chilling spareness, light on thrills and heavy on dread. Slow, largely silent and endlessly stylish.
There have been no two more charismatic grifters than Paul Newman and Robert Redford when they teamed up again with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” director George Roy Hill for this best picture winner. Their mark in this ’30s ragtime caper? A crime boss played by the intimidating Robert Shaw.
Stanley Kubrick made two films before this one — juvenilia, mere warmups to this, his first Hollywood film, released when he was a tender 28-yearsold. And it’s a better film than most masters of the craft make at the height of their career, showcasing the visual panache the ingenious photographer would eventually push to more jaw-dropping extremes. More plot-heavy than Kubrick’s later works, this noir caper features a band of crooks headed by Sterling Hayden hatching a plan to rob a
Sidney Lumet’s movie about a bank robbery that couldn’t have gone worse couldn’t be better. Two would-be criminals, Sonny (Al Pacino) and Sal (John Cazale), try their hand at robbing a Brooklyn bank. What should have been an inand-out job turns into a media circus with the likable robbers holed up with hostages as they desperately work out an escape plan. Even as the situation spirals out of control, the story becomes more personal — motivations come to light, ambitions are thwarted and Sonny’s soul is left laid bare in the stifling bank. This is as close as movies get to perfect.