The League Of Gentlemen - classic British heist movie.
How about the Argentinian movie Nine Queens*? Fantastic movie about a lovely crime.
Daniel
I’m partial to The Usual Suspects, The Score, and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (for a light twist on “the perfect crime”).
Seconded. I’m not a big fan of either Clive Owen (strikes me as one-dimensional and emotionless, especially in King Arthur or Spike Lee, but I thoroughly enjoyed Inside Man. And it was a perfect crime.
What was Clive Owen doing in Spike Lee?
Though they are the good guys, the original Mission: Impossible TV series was essentially all just perfect heists. Highly recommended if you can find any.
Thirded. Inside Man with Clive Owen (or as I like to call him after seeing this move, Clive OWNed) is my favorite movie of the year so far. Absolutley loved it, and plan on buying the DVD.
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels…good movie, but can we really say it makes the cut? The main characters got by with luck, and they didn’t really come out with too much more than their necks
For a really light twist, check out Quick Change, which I would bet is a direct ascendant to Inside Man. Bill Murray is at his wry best.
Did I miss it, or has no one mentioned The Sting? There are also three by Alec Guiness: The Lavender Hill Mob, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and The Lady Killers.
I just saw Match Point this weekend, and I think it fits nicely in this catagory. I would’ve never pegged it as a Woody Allen movie, though…
I was also surprised noone mentioning Alec Guiness until you
greg Charles writes:
You missed it. Look at my post #4
jsc1953 writes:
I’ve got a theory about that item, but it has to go in a spoiler box:
The mysterious item is the container for the custom assassin’s rifle. It turns out to be a pair of crutches, made of hollow stainless steel tubes (although they were supposed to be aluminum, but that turned out to be too weak). This allowed the Jackal to smuggle the rifle, undetected, close to his target, President de Gaulle.
In the book it was only a single crutch, not a pair. Every Sherlock Holmes fan knows that one of the referred to but unwritten Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was “the Singular Affair of the Aluminum Crutch”. I’ve always fet that Frederick Forsyth was a Sherlock Holmes fan who must have ruminated about that adventure referred to in an offhand way by Watson, and who came up with this ingenious way it was used, and made it an essential plot point of his first fictional work.
Matchstick Men.
Actually…
That crime was very flawed and was a result of desperation, even if it was tactical. What made tha plan work was that the main character fails to throw out the landlady's ring into the water, in a scene which mimicks the tennis monologue in the opening shot of the film. If the ring would have gone into the water, he would likely have been caught.
That was supposed to be in a spoiler block! Read at risk!
“The Hot Rock” (1972 Robert Redford, Zero Mostel, George Segal). Very funny movie about an attempted jewelry robbery. Roller coaster twists, and what a great ending.
It is kind of pointless to mention this as very few people will recall it and I don’t believe you will find it anywhere but the 1967 Michael Winner movie The Jokers starring Michael Crawford and Oliver Reed is a terrific example of the perfect crime with a clever twist. They play spoiled rich brothers who plan to steal the crown jewels and then return them - they are only in it for the sport. A really fine forgotten 60s movie.
Sexy Beast.
The Talented Mr. Ripley, if I remember correctly.
Off the top of my head…
Deathtrap
Evil Under the Sun
Minority Report
Granted, these are “perfect murders” rather than heist films.
The remake isn’t bad, either.