I’m getting interested in this fascination little movie genre where the story revolves around the perfect crime, most often a bank robbery. I’m thinking of movies like The Thomas Crown Affair,** The Italian Job** and Ocean’s Eleven. The protagonists in these movies are usually anti-heroic, they are thieves, but they are also fun and intelligent and charming and rob banks with finesse and cool technical gadgets.
Any examples of movies like these?
The Anderson Tapes, Rififi, and Topkapi
Well, Ocean’s Twelve, if it didn’t suck so badly.
I have a ‘perfect crime’ movie in mind, but alas it doesn’t involve a bank robbery or cool suavity. But it is the perfect murder. Malice Aforethought:
(From memory - I saw it in the 1980s). Set in 1930s England. The antihero is a doctor, and wants to dispose of his wife. Starts poisoning her food with small amounts of a pharmaceutical that gives her chronic headaches. When she asks him for painkillers, he gives them to her. Her headaches get worse and worse, and she becomes desperate. He hints that maybe she could try morphine, but he doesn’t want her to try, due to its addictive nature. Eventually he ‘relents’, and over the weeks she becomes an addict. He discontinues use of the headache pharmaceutical, so there is none left in her system, then one day goes out, leaving no morphine around for his wife. He does, however, leave a syringe full of cyanide ‘carelessly’ lying around. His wife, in the throes of withdrawal, injects herself with the poison while he has an alibi and witnesses. The police, aware of her headaches and addiction, conclude she committed suicide. Brilliant!
My all-time favorite “plot” film is Fred Zinneman’s adaptation of Day of the Jackal. It would have been the Perfect Crime, except that the French Security forces uncovered its existence. Then it was a duel between the Anonymous Jackal and Commisaire Lebel trying to find him. Exttremely well done and belevable, and far better than its paler imitators Jackal and In the Line of Fire.
The 1980 film Rough Cut, starring David Nicven and Burt Reynolds (!) and directed by Don Siegel falls into this category, too.
And how can you not include The Sting?
I thought “Inside Man” was a good example of this and a decent movie to boot.
BTW, if you’re a fan of this sort of thing, watch Hu$tle on AMC Saturday nights at 10 pm EDT.
There’s a perfect crime every week – all brilliantly put together and as good as any of the movies mentioned so far.
Check out a 1966 film called “Gambit,” with Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine. It’s a delicious twist on the “perfect crime.” Telling you any more would spoil all the fun!
Some of these aren’t entirely based on the perfect crime, but feature the (or a) perfect crime heavily in the plot.
Shade
Seven Thieves
The Last Seduction
Oh, and Foolproof, a fun little film about three friends who plan perfect crimes but don’t commit them, until a mobster blackmails them into one.
Not exactly what the OP had in mind, since these people aren’t “fun” in the same way as in , say, “The Sting”, but a couple of attempts to commit the perfect crime, nonetheless:
**The Last of Sheila
Body Heat**
Neat little twists in both.
Kelly’s Heroes (theft) and A Perfect Murder (murder). Also, to a lesser degree, I like to think of Silence of the Lambs as an example of the perfect breakout from a maximum security boobyhatch.
Oh, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
Maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but I asked for similiar movies and even used the Thomas Crown Affair as my example, in an earlier thread titled “Great Heist Movies” Here is the Heist Movies Link . I haven’t seen them all, but the ones I have seen were pretty good. Confidence , if I remember correctly, was my most recent heist movie viewing, it was quite good IMO.
I’d say The Spanish Prisoner is another good example. Plus it’s a movie with more twists than a sack of snakes, which is always good.
Any version of the Agatha Christie story that used to have a politically incorrect title and is now called And then there were none or Ten Little Indians would also have to be on the ‘perfect crimes’ list.
I love The Spanish Prisoner,
but it’s hardly the perfect crime as IIRC all the bad guys get caught at the end.
I’m not sure its you are looking for,but Ripley’s Game did it for me
Excellent call, Cal.
DotJ was one of the first movies I can recall to use a scene that’s now standard in any heist film: the scene where the plotter acquires some obscure piece of gadgetry, documentation, or other foofraw that will be essential to the execution of the scheme. The viewer sez “huh? what’s that for?” and then an hour later you get the payoff…“oooohhh…cool!”.
Which was a remake of Hitchcock’s Dial ‘M’ for Murder.
This is gonna be one, long spoiler.[spoiler]Actually, IMHO they didn’t get caught. Everything from beginning to end was a scam on Ross (Scott Campbell’s character) After I saw the movie I spent about a day trying to get bits to fit, got suspicious and googled the movie. I found a site deconstructing it (alas, it seems to be missing now) where my thoughts were confirmed.
The U.S. Marshals at the end were not really such, but part of the scam. They shoot Dell (Steve Martin) with a dart gun so as to cause no real injury, bundle him and Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon) off with the McGuffin, leaving the mark totally clueless that he had been duped. Everyone except poor Ross in those last ten minutes – including the two NYPD detectives – was a phony, playing Ross like a fish. Mamet dupes the audience as well as the mark, letting us see what we expect to see while totally overlooking the clues to the real situation. A few examples:
Was Lang (Ross’ buddy) really dead? Ross doesn’t exactly give him a thorough examination before fleeing the apartment and you never see a news story or other independent corroboration of the death. As he flees, he sees a cop car go by, lights and siren on, but was it responding to a call about the apartment he just left? And since when are detectives the first at a crime scene – it’s always the uniforms first.
Ricci is trying to get Ross to the airport, spots cops looking for someone and gets the impulse to drive to Boston instead. Who were the cops looking for? They’re stopping cars and holding a sheet, presumably with someone’s picture on it, but you never see the picture. Was it Ross or something totally unrelated?
The Marshals wire Ross and put him in harm’s way to get a recording from Dell as to where the Formula is, but a blatting boat horn at a critical moment renders the tape worthless. Why use a dart gun to bring down a felon; plain ol’ bullets aren’t good enough? As a kicker, the ‘U S Marshall’ on the back of their jackets is spelled wrong.
Now the picture doesn’t explicitly say, “This is the was it is, boys and girls,” But I find these, and other clues, compelling. I remember Ricci giving Ross a little smile before being bundled into the paddy wagon. To me, she was letting him have his moment of triumph – and why not? She was going to be getting her share of the swag in a little bit, anyway.[/spoiler]
The premire write of these things is Donald E. Westlake.
Like the Robert Reford/George Segal caper “The Hot Rock” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068718/
Westlake written movies: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922799/