Um. Dare I say it…?
Entrapment. With Catherine Zeta jones and Sean Connery.
Sorry. I’ll shut up now.
My recommendation for a con/heist film is No Blood, No Tears. Because you’ve probably never heard of it, I’ll attach a review I wrote for another, now defunct ( 
) website. You can rent the movie from Netflix.
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**No Blood No Tears **
Directed by Seung-wan Ryoo
Starring Do-yeon Jeon, Hye-yeong Lee, and Jae-yeong Jeong
In Korean with English subtitles
Film: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Wow, this action/comedy gangster/heist flick really delivers the goods! Mix several parts Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, a dash of Go, a smidgen of True Romance, and fights as brutal as **Fight Club **(but with women giving and taking beatings as much or moreso than the men) – put it all through the filter of a Korean gangster film and you have No Blood, No Tears, a tour de force by hot young director Seung-wan Ryoo (Die Bad; Crying Fist).
The plot is complex. But not so that you can’t follow what is going on as it happens. Don’t plan on being two jumps ahead, however. Just let the movie come to you and you will be rewarded.
The whole issue of the heist and most of the fights (which are pretty brutal) don’t really come into play until the second half of the film, but there is plenty of good stuff in the first half to get you there.
The story is centered around two good female leads. Hye-yeong Lee plays Kyeong-seon, who owes the local neighborhood loan shark a lot of money. She’s got a certain past and tends to solve problems by a beer bottle across the head or a kick to the gut. Then we have Su-ji (played by Do-yeon Jeon)–the frequently smacked around moll of a low-level gangster. A chance encounter puts them together and gets the wheels turning on how they can make off with a whole lot of the high-level gangster’s money.
There are double crosses, triple crosses, and lots of surprises along the way. A multitude of other characters play important roles. Inept police detectives; idiotic street punks who switch back and forth from being informants for the police and trying to get in on the goods themselves; loan collectors who don’t know if they should start taking off fingers or sit down and eat lunch with the debtor. Perhaps most impressive is a gangster tough (credited as “Silent Man”) played by famed martial arts action director Doo-hong Jung. He has a great fight scene where he really gets to strut his stuff.
If you are tired of the same old Hollywood plots, fights, and chases, do yourself a favor and seek this film out. The Korean disc is R0 (although it says R3 on the case). This is the one I watched and the look of the film and the subtitling were very good. It seems there is now an R1 disc as well, but I can’t vouch for the presentation quality.
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The Good Thief (aka: Le Dernier coup de Monsieur Bob)
Nick Nolte as an aging gambler/heroin addict masterminding the robbery of a casino in Monte Carlo.
It is actually a much better movie than that. Really. It is a good movie. Not great, prolly not on many top ten lists, but still very good.
Killing Zoe, very dark and gritty.
CMC fnord!
Charley Varrick, an excellent low-key 1973 movie about bank robbery directed by Don Siegel and featuring Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker and John Vernon in the cast.
Amen! If you plan to catch it on TV, avoid the abortion on AMC. They butcher out the good parts. Flix, Encore, IFC or premium channels show it all. Joe Don Baker is a good part of why this works so well. One of my all-time favorites. Matthau rules. Check his credits for other non-comedy movies of that era.
I agree completely, he makes an excellent and intimidating heavy.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned The Hot Rock. It is not as good as the book, but still not bad.
Light and fluffy: How to Steal a Million–Peter O’Toole, Audrey Hepburn, Eli Wallach.
The Brain– David Niven
Let me throw in a couple of heist films dealing with the mint, and one dealing with Fort Knox.
Mint:
Sam Whiskey - Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson, Clint Walker and Ossie Davis. (actually this is a combination of a Western and a heist film).
Who’s Minding the Mint - Milton Berle, Joey Bishop, Walter Brennen, Bob Denver (this was definitely played for laughs).
Fort Knox:
Goldfinger - Sean Connery, Honor Blackman (OK, OK, this is a spy/thriller, but they did knock over Fort Knox - sort of).
I just noticed someone did mention it. Sorry.
Someone here once described the genre of “getting shit to work” movies, which centers around the planning and execution of some intricate task. Heist movies are certainly a subset of that.
So, might you consider a prison escape movie? I saw a great one a few years ago called Le Trou (1960, French, black-and-white). If you liked Rififi, this might be right up your alley.
Since Topkapi and The Hot Rock have both been mentioned already, one with a lot of very small heists is Harry in Your Pocket (1973) with James Coburn as the leader of a team of pickpockets. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a DVD, and apparently even the VHS is rare.
It actually almost doesn’t qualify as a “heist” movie, but it does qualify as a “caper” movie (if the distinction matters):
Seconded. Great movie.
Every once and a while it’ll pop up on a movie channel. It’s definitely worth the trouble to see.
Here’s a good Con/Heist/Western all rolled into one: Sergio Leone’s Giù la testa (also known variously as A Fistful of Dynamite and Duck, You Sucker).