The Bank Job

Based on a true story, The Bank Job starts in the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean, where a “British royal princess” is frolicking in the shallows.  She takes her frolic into a nearby beach villa where it quickly turns into a hot threesome with an athletic man and another young woman.  Unknown to her she is being photographed through an open window.

Suddenly we are back in grey wet London.  It’s the early seventies and Terry Leather (Jason Statham) is trying to sell second-hand cars out of his lockup garage in South London.  Terry is up to his ears in debt to a loan shark whose heavy crew are demanding payment or punishment.  

The royal photographs are worrying the upper class spooks in charge of MI5.  The photos have fallen into the hands of Michael X, an afro-Caribbean radical whose politics are a cover for racketeering and prostitution.  His possession of the photographs prevents the police from moving against him. 

Roger Donaldson (director of the superb The World’s Fastest Indian) paints his picture of 70s London with verve and economy.  Business is depressed, activist politics are on the increase, and a corrupt London police force is taking payoffs from the vice lords.  In scene after short scene, Donaldson shows London’s sleazy underbelly, with drugs and prostitution fuelling organized crime.

MI5 discover that the photographs are in a safe deposit box in Baker Street,.they need a way of getting them without arousing suspicion.  Luck comes their way, in the form of Saffron Burrows, a model with a past.  In return for a deal she recruits Terry to rob the bank.

Jason Statham gives a really finely graduated performance as Terry.  Tough and manly, he is too smart for South London but too desperate to say no to the easy money he can get from the robbery.  He and Burrows’ Melanie circle around each other, Melanie playing to Terry’s unspoken desire for her.  The interplay between Statham and Burrows is subtly portrayed and they act out these scenes with a worried intensity which is both believable and captivating.

Comedy
The tension of the movie is alleviated by the comic strand that runs all through the Bank Job.  Terry’s mates are a pair of likely lads, Dave, a part-time porn actor and Kev, a wedding photographer who lives in a fantasy of being David Bailey.  Terry beefs up the team with a tough Greek welder/mechanic and an upper-class con man for a front man.  But it is Dave and Kev who give The Bank Job the sort of droll down-to-earth comedy that made The Italian job so much fun to watch.
   

Men and Machines
The Bank Job intercuts between the cynical old Etonians running MI5 and Terry’s slightly shambolic gang.  The movie steps up the pressure when Terry starts the robbery.  Here director Donaldson is on his favourite territory, men and machinery, and the Bank Job really starts to accelerate.  Terry and his crew dig a tunnel from the basement of an empty shop to the vault of the bank.  Donaldson goes the whole hog, with pneumatic hammers, thermic lances and pickaxes.  This is a bank raid in force, a visual and aural feast as the gang literally dig for gold. 

Donaldson directs the Bank Job at a cracking pace and sheer excitement drags the viewer along.  He gets amazing performances from every one of his cast and their characters all become very real in a short space of time.  He does this by dint of a tight articulate script that exposes the real feelings that his players have.    

Once the caper has gone down the gang realize they are in something much bigger and much more dangerous than they ever expected.  The Bank Job  becomes darker and more desperate and the caper starts to unravel, as weaker characters begin to get into trouble. 

This is a hell of a movie.  Donaldson directs with a real passion, the Bank job is fiercely suspenseful and once the vault is robbed, every scene is fraught with danger.  There is not a dud moment in the movie.  Jason Statham gives a magnificent performance, as an ordinary man called upon to show extraordinary courage.  His performance is by turns smart, loving, tough and desperate and there is not a scene that he does not carry with style.  Once again we are on Donaldson’s home turf, showing the strength of will that some men can conjure up, the determination to beat all odds.

Donaldson also makes the women in the Bank Job very real and Saffron Burrows as Melanie gets almost as much screen time as Statham and even when she is out of her depth her character never loses her guts.  There is also a visceral passionate scene between Terry and his wife (Keeley Hawes) that simply makes you hold your breath.  These are not  bit-players but living, breathing women in a world of danger.  

There are too many great performances to count.  Peter Bowles as a ruthless scheming MI5 boss almost steals the movie, as does David Suchet as the murdering vice lord in league with Michael X.  

It is such a pleasure to see a British film that is this good.  The Bank Job has character, plot and action and is a really satisfying film on so many levels.  The way it plays out the corrupt connections between the police, vice and the establishment has never been done so well.  

Go and see this movie.  It is sheer enjoyment from beginning to end and virtuoso moviemaking. The Bank Job  has all the hallmarks of a great British movie.     
 

The Bank Job goes on general release in the UK from the 28th February and in the US from the 1st of March.

Trailers for the Bank Job are here:

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Here is my third post on Caper Movies; this one contains my top ten favorite caper movies.   

No 10: The Italian Job (1969 Original)

The most daunting caper movie to review, having been acclaimed by experts and the one that put down so many markers for this sub-genre. 

We know the story.  Michael Caine at his sexiest, is smart as a whip as Charlie Croaker, clever London thief and man-about-town.  He gets a heads-up on a plan for robbing a gold shipment in Turin, Italy.  He pitches the plan to Noel Coward’s criminal mastermind Mr Bridger.  Bridger offers to bankroll Charlie and off our criminals go.  The Mafia get wind of the plan and threaten to kill the English gang for poaching on their turf.  But Charlie has a plan that involves a pervy professor and three beautiful English mini-minor cars.

Why is it still so good?  Firstly the tone of the film is was perfect for it’s time .  The gang’s irreverence and cheerful disregard of authority was new to the movies and done really well here.  Secondly the gang do not exude menace so much as shambling stupidity.  Caine’s frantic attempts to get his thick-eared gang not to screw up are still hilarious, even after seeing the movie many times.  And finally of the course there is the mini-minor car chase, the most unorthodox chase ever filmed (at that time).  This was all new and fresh, the colours vivid and the cinematography lively, the driving stunts excite in a way that special effects never can. 

It still has that feel about it, even though clever visuals are now so far in advance of what The Italian Job was capable of.  Overall The Italian Job has a feelgood factor that few movies are capable of achieving.

The Italian Job is available in the UK here and in the US here

No 9:  Foolproof

Three smart yuppies-in-training plan interesting robberies and take-downs.  They are meticulous, daring and clever but the twist is that they have no intention of executing their crimes, its all for fun.  This all changes when a real professional criminal gets hold of one of their plans and blackmails them into executing a crime for him.  The premise is very similar to that of Steal but Foolproof does it better.

Foolproof starts off with this slightly confusing not-real game but turns into a superb caper movie.  The story becomes clever, complicated and and has a real keep-you-guessing edge.  The pacing of this movie is excellent. Likewise the script is quick and the dialogue witty and sharp.  I laughed out loud at some of the interplay between the characters.  The actual takedown is great, full of smart moves, clever gadgets and tense moments, as our team hit a hi-tech vault for $40 million in bearer bonds.

The strong characters carry the movie past its wobbly beginning and really develop as our three heroes try to get out from under.  Each of them are pushed to their limits as they try to steal the bonds from the formidable vault.  Ryan Reynolds (looking incredibly young here) plays Kevin, leader and scammer, Kristin Booth plays Sam, athlete and pickpocket.  These two give dramatic performance which really make Foolproof come alive.  But the best performance comes from Joris Jarsky, acting his head off as Rob, the brains of the outfit, who wants to take things just that bit too far.  David Suchet makes a smooth but very menacing gang boss and gives a gloss of quality acting to the movie.   

Foolproof bombed when it was released but really did not deserve the harsh reviews.  I think Foolproof is one of the best caper movies.  Do yourself a real favour, rent or buy this one, it is really really good.      

Foolproof is available in the UK here and in the US here. 

No 8:  Ocean’s Eleven

The casting of George Clooney as Danny Ocean  in Soderbergh’s version of Ocean’s Eleven was pure genius.  Clooney’s lazy cool energy is the trademark of the movie and all the other plays adopt the same tone.  It is the simple fun of men being men together. I always feel that, if these guys were not planning a caper they would be sitting in a bar, joking and telling yarns.  It’s the same kind of easy energy.

So if the energy of the players is slippery and slow (excepting Don Cheadle’s irascible cockney safecracker Basher) the pace is provided by Soderbergh’s knowing and clever direction, moving quickly from shot to shot but always making sure we are there with him.    

There are too many great moments in Ocean’s Eleven to list and Soderbergh gets great performances from the entire crew.  The script is sharp funny, clever, with Matt Damon’s Linus making a great straight man for Clooney and Pitt.  The caper is really well executed, has perfect integrity and is very satisfying.  The ending is the best of any caper and really seals the deal.   It shows the closeness and camaraderie between Ocean’s gang and if you did not love them before, at that final moment you will.  

 Ocean’s Eleven is available in the UK here and in the US here

No 7:  The First Great Train Robbery

Set in the Victorian England of the 1850′s, two thieves set out to steal a consignment of gold bullion.  The bullion is intended to pay the army engaged in Britain’s war in the Crimea.  Once a month the gold consignment is loaded on a steam train from London to Folkstone, from where it is shipped overseas.  Our thieves conclude that the only way to successfully steal the gold is from the moving train.

Our thieves are Sean Connery as Edward Pierce, gentleman thief and Donald Sutherland as an Irish safecracker.  They discover that they need four unique keys to open the gold safe on the train and so the shenanigans begin. 

There is great fun to be had in this movie as we watch Connery’s imposing Pierce leading pompous English officials around by the nose.  As the movie progresses Connery sets Sutherland more and more difficult tasks, to which Sutherland responds by whining and complaining.  Connery, dominant and completely self-assured, ignores Sutherland, to great comic effect.  Lesley Anne Down as Connery’s put-upon mistress is also good, being obliged to play both an upscale French whore and a grieving young woman with a coffin, to advance the caper. 

The caper itself is conducted in stages, including a night break-in at the railway station where the train will leave from.  This is cleverly done, with our thieves coming within a knife-edge of discovery.   The assault on the train looks and feels very real and for the first time we see Connery’s mastermind make a mistake. 

Connery is the ultimate manly male in this movie, handsome and extremely virile.  Dressed in Victorian frockcoats and brocade waistcoats he radiates power and self-assurance.  This is Connery the sex-symbol at large.

Directed by Michael Crichton from his own novel, the First Great Train Robbery is partly based on a real crime.  Crichton gives us a film that feels historically correct, is great fun and has a clever caper to enjoy.

The First Great Train Robbery is available in the UK here and in the US here.
 

No: 6  Nine Queens

A latin sting, with some judiciously timed capering thrown in at the end.  Two con men meet during a supermarket sting in Buenos Aires.  One offers the other a job as his apprentice and off we go.  Ricardo Darin is Marcos, the admitted amoral master conman and Gaston Pauls is the likeable but callow Juan. 

This is an unlikely start for what is one of the best con/capers I have ever seen.  This was director Fabian Berlinsky’s first movie and gives us a crook’s tour of modern Buenos Aires, introducing us to the quirkiest and most entertaining characters.  Amazingly all of these characters have an integral place in the movie and the story almost tells itself.  9 Queens is a joy to watch, effortless and fluid, picturesque and colourful.  The two leads dominate the movie and the way they play off each other is great cinema and by turns funny and tricky.         

As if by accident, our two con men get themselves into a big caper.  Suddenly the clock is ticking as they see the big score in front of their eyes, with only a few hours to seal the deal and make the steal.

Arrogant businessmen, valuable stamps and Marcos’ beautiful but pissed-off sister all get thrown into the mix.  Nothing goes according to plan and our leads spend more time patching their caper than they do executing it.  But it all comes together.

As I write this I feel like the more I write about 9 Queens, the less I say.  Buy or rent this and watch it.  This is a great caper movie.  Great movie  
 
9 Queens is available in the UK here and in the US here.

   
No 5: The Good Thief

A remake of Bob Le Flambeur, the classic French heist but with a life and joy all of its own.  Bob, gambler, heroin addict and American smart-ass, eking out a living in low rent card games in the arse-end of the French Riviera (the slums of Nice, smelly and dangerous).  Bob is played by Nick Nolte, never more grizzled and handsome, never more charming.  One of Nick Nolte’s best ever performances, a man at the bottom who knowingly gets himself into a caper of great danger.

One last job, the Casino Riviera in Monaco.  Bob gathers two crews, for two separate capers, all the while knowing he is going to be betrayed to the cops.  Great interplay between Nolte and the boss cop (Tcheky Karo, in an inspired performance) and superb ensemble playing from a charismatic and sometimes downright weird French cast.  Topped off with a slinky sexy Russian femme who is only just on the right side of jailbait.   

Sly and adult, with pinpoint-sharp man-to-man repartee.  This caper has the best lines of any caper I have seen.  These guys know it could be jail or death but, hey, no need to get too serious about it. 

Neil Jordan directs with some sharp visuals and contrasting locations that keep you glued to the movie.  He really captures the light and seductive colours of the Riviera and throws the slums of Nice and the wealth of Monaco into sharp contrast.  He makes Monaco at night the glittering prize for the hard-bitten heist gangs.  Add a superb soundtrack and some good changes of tempo and The Good Thief qualifies as a top-class caper.  The heist is well-established and played out with integrity.  There are a couple of dud scenes but really the Riviera has not looked this exciting since Grant and Hitchcock in “To catch a thief”.   Plus a really satisfying ending.
 
The Good Thief is available in the UK here and in the US here.
  

No 4: Heist

Heist kicks in with an electric opening as crooks Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) and Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo) rob a high-end jewellery store, in a city in a state somewhere below the 69th Parallel  (might be Oregon, might be Illinois).  Hackman loses his mask in the robbery and the store’s security video captures him full-face.    

Now Hackman knows it is only a matter of time before he is tracked down and sets his mind to planning his last big job, the one that will get him out from under.  He is hampered by his weaselly fence (Danny DeVito as a menacing slimeball) who demands participation in the big caper.  The clock is is ticking and the complications numerous. 

So Hackman sets up the big caper, a gold bullion robbery from an airliner which is about to take off.  The time for the caper is measured in minutes and seconds and while it is running the sense of impending disaster, arrest and capture, is massive.  This is a great caper, with tools and timing and some great evade and escape tricks.  Hackman’s method for getting the gold out of the airport is, well, simply genius.   
   
Heist is tight, the caper team are tight, the direction and plotting are tight, never a wasted  moment, economy of vision translating into a crisp action movie that keeps moving and keeps its audience engaged.  This is a movie about tough people, men and women of few words, squeezing their communication out in a few terse sentences.  This caper feels real, you can taste the determination, the fear and the greed.  

Other capers have humour, Heist has Hackman at his sarcastic, smartass best.  There are some great lines in this movie and great interplay between Hackman and Delroy Lindo as the pro thieves.  David Mamet directs with absolute certainty and gets deep, insightful performances out of his actors.  Hackman is superb, as is Danny DeVito, but it is the ensemble playing that makes this movie shine.

Once the gold is liberated, alliances break down and the double-crosses start.  Only the person with the most tricks up their sleeve will win.  Misdirection and deceit take their toll and only at the very last moment do we see who is the last man standing.

Great caper, great acting, one of those movies where you see something new every time you watch it.                

Heist is available in the UK here and in the US here 

No: 3  Confidence

This is a caper that really sparkles!  Ed Burns leads a team of grifters trying to get out from under, get revenge and make the big score.  Aided by a superb script that really cares about its characters and some fast direction (James Foley), Confidence tells a story of a caper in Los Angeles.  Burns is the grifter, Rachel Weisz is his shill and Paul Giamatti provides the vicious put-downs as the smart sidekick.  Dustin Hoffman, who I have never previously warmed to, is a truly repulsive bad guy.  

This is a clever, confident movie with a real tension in the story.  Ed Burns is manly, smart and stylish.  But, as Hoffman points out to him “Style will get you killed”.  Needless to say that is not a sentiment we agree with here on What Makes a Man.  So I was rooting for Burns. 

There are so many good things about this movie, it is difficult to know where to start, or stop.  The script sketches all of the characters really well, making it easy to identify with them.  All of the actors produce superb performances, with Burns, Weisz, Hoffman and Andy Garcia slightly outclassing the other players.  The scenes between Burns and Hoffman are electric and a sheer joy to watch.  Everybody gives a great performance and the ensemble playing is just magical. 

The cinematography is colourful and in places downright beautiful, in some places stopping just short of lush.  A couple of the night scenes are contenders for the Michael-Mann-LA-is-beautiful award.  James Foley directs like his life depends on it. This movie is quick, and I mean really quick and clever.  The scenes move quickly, the dialogue moves quicker and the characters move quicker still.  The movie sets the caper up for us but you really have to watch it closely.  This is not a movie you can watch with half your attention, this is a movie that demands you engage.

Confidence draws you in and you want Burns and his crew to win.  See it and see for yourself.

Confidence is available in the UK here and in the US here.
 

No: 2 The Italian Job

Fast, fun and warm-hearted.  On its release it was hammered by lazy English journalists who did the ready-made “not a patch on Michael Caine” story.  In my opinion, the remake is miles better than the original.  The opening caper, involving a safe, Venice and some fast speedboat work, makes grown men roar with appreciation.  Adrenaline-charged fun with boats.  

Everybody in this film acts their heads off, from Mark Wahlberg as Charlie Croaker, criminal genius, to Charlize Theron’s beautiful but slightly brittle safebreaker.  Jason Statham gets a role where as “Handsome Rob” he is a getaway driver who is irresistible to women.  Statham shows he is a real actor and gives a great performance.  Moss Def is droll and very funny as the ultra-cool explosives expert.  They make a colourful, confident gang and the scenes between them have real warmth.

F. Gary Gray directed the movie, with a real eye for action and some quirky moments, including a pompous politically correct Ukrainian fence and a huge Samoan gang boss who must weight 30 stones if he weighs a pound.  This is exactly what a caper movie should be, with a twisty plot and great characters.  Occasionally it shows a hard edge, with a truly amoral villain who cannot be underestimated.  The Italian Job has the qualities of being very carefully crafted and great timing. 

The final caper is magnificent and like the job in Venice, will take your breath away the first time you see it.  Los Angeles makes a colourful and surprisingly varied caper venue, giving us some real surprises of location.  The scenes with the mini’s have all the excitement and charm of the original, with the added twist that the mini’s are being chased around Los Angeles by helicopter. 

This film has a huge heart, a truly great caper and every second of the movie radiates style.  Simply the best.    

Postscript
There is supposed to be a follow-up to the Italian Job, working title is the Brazilian Job.  However like many movies, it has been delayed by the Hollywood screenwriters strike.  The problem with information on the web about forthcoming movies is that it promises great movies in the future.  The end result is that you wish your life away waiting for the movies you want to see.  Still I hope the Brazilian job does get the original cast and director together and gets made.     

The Italian Job is available in the UK here and in the US here.

No 1:  The Thomas Crown Affair

The caper is ingenious and this movie leaps off the blocks, as the caper is committed during the very first scenes of the movie.  A determined gang of thieves set out to rob a large New York museum.  Their entry into the museum is outrageously daring and their progress through the museum is painstakingly tracked by the camera, excitement building all the time.  John McTiernan, master of action movies such as the Hunt for Red October, makes these scenes urgent and tense.  At this point in the movie we do not know where our loyalties lie and we are held at arm’s length, as McTiernan manipulates us, the audience, into place.

Pierce Brosnan, previously introduced as corporate financier Thomas Crown, is suddenly revealed as the caper boss, and steals a priceless Monet.  He escapes, the crew are captured and the New York police are called in to clear up the mess.  At this point Rene Russo’s insurance investigator appears.   

The ensuing duel of wits between Brosnan’s art thief/Mergers and Acquisitions financier and Russo’s insurance agent sparks and pops all the way thorough the movie.  Russo is old enough and stylish enough to take on Brosnan’s “self-involved, successful loner” (as the movie puts it).  The message is obvious.  For a real man, only a real woman will do.  

Several things put the Thomas Crown Affair in a class of its own.

The movie uses the device of intercutting scenes of Thomas Crown with his therapist into the main story.  This is masterful, it isolates Crown from the action and really allows us to see the man he is.  As an added masterstroke the therapist is played by Faye Dunaway, who played the insurance investigator in the original Thomas Crown Affair. 

The second thing that the movie has is John McTiernan’s direction.  All of McTiernan’s movies have something intelligent to say about real men and Thomas Crown is his masterwork.  In scene after scene he shows Brosnan as a dominant rogue male, powerful, ambitious and slightly contemptuous of the rest of the world.  Brosnan is tired of Wall Street and can now only find excitement in tougher games, breaking the law.  

There is no political correctness here, Brosnan is always ahead of Russo, always in control.  The war between them moves and sways, but Russo’s is always on the back foot, until the final confrontation.  For as Brosnan has been seducing Russo, he has fallen in love with her.  This is brilliantly done, as Brosnan unwittingly reveals a chink in his armour.         

This is McTiernan and Brosnan’s masterpiece.  McTiernan directs a celebration of the
Alpha male.  Brosnan, immaculately dressed by Italian master tailor Gianni Campagna looks every inch the billionaire financier and crucially has the manners and persona to match.  Brosnan gives the best performance of his career, powerful and confident.  The Thomas Crown affair has real style and taste.    

This a movie that transcends the caper genre, it is sexy, stylish and has the timing and grace of an Aston Martin.  It is the examplar of caper movies and in my opinion one of the best Hollywood movies ever made. 
 

The Thomas Crown Affair is available in the UK here and in the US here

Some thoughts on Caper Movies.

I realised while writing this piece that the best caper movies are those where the capers have an integrity of their own.  Where the actual take-downs are given centre-stage and are not cheated in order to make way for more action or laughs or provide a vehicle for a star.  Capers are like music and have to have the right tempo, be it the silky bossa nova of Ocean’s Eleven or the angry jazz of Heist.  The caper has to be the centre-piece or the movie falls between the stools of action and contrivance.

Also, the more style a caper movie it has, the better it runs.  If a gentleman thief is gonna go a-robbin’ then it has to be for the best.  Style, charm and great clothes might just carry the day, when tougher crews have failed.   

Still to come 

This post concludes my look at caper movies.  Later I will post a review of a new caper movie; The Bank Job. 

This seems to be a good year for caper movies.  Later in the spring Michael Caine and Demi Moore star in Flawless, writeup and trailer here.  

Great Caper Movies 20-11

My last post was a celebration of caper movies.  In that post i included the first 10 (30-21) of my favourite caper movies. Below are movies 20-11.  I think there are one or two little-known gems in this section. Enjoy. 

No 20: Steal

The hipster’s caper movie.  Steal’s caper gang are cool, young, and unorthodox.  Led by Stephen Dorff they take down bank scores in a unnamed US city.  Dorff’s crew are athletic extreme sports guys, and they favour clever methods that allow them to evade the law rather than confront them.   In their first takedown, which opens the movie, they escape on skate boards.  Great action moviemaking.  

Professional and successful, this gang movie quickly onto their second big score, only to discover that tougher and meaner criminals are onto them.  The net tightens and the gang are forced to work for the type of violent thugs they have always despised.  Dorff frantically looks for a way out from under, while setting up ever more inventive capers. Life gets even more complicated when Dorff finds out the woman he has just started dating (Nastasha Henstridge) is a cop, and worse, a cop on the strike force that is looking to bust his gang.

This is a fast exciting movie with original and ingenious capers.  This is a laugh out loud, applaud the screen great caper movie.   It was directed by Gerard Pires, the French moviemaker who had a huge hit with “Taxi” and Steal has the same rollicking energy. 

However the acting on Steal is variable and lets the movie down.  The two lead bad guys (one of them is Steven Berkoff as a hellfire preacher cum mob assassin – appalling) are really bad.  Natasha Henstridge is saddled with a role which, even after repeated watchings I do not clearly understand and she looks uncomfortable throughout the movie.  Dorff is excellent throughout and his gang are good but it makes the movie a little lopsided. 

If you stick with this and give due consideration for some of the acting, this is a cracking caper movie.

Steal is available in the UK here and in the US here.
  

No 19:  Bob Le Flambeur      

Bob is a gambler, ex-con and gentlemen thief, living by a strict code of honour.  Smartly dressed and very cool.  Bob haunts the Paris underworld gambling in illicit card games in smoky backrooms.  Bob’s taste for real crime has been reduced by a spell in prison.    

However Bob’s life gets more complicated.  His young sidekick Paolo idolizes him and wants him to take down one last big score.  Further complications arrive in the form of Anne, a beautiful teenage girl with an innocent face, who is much too sexy for her own good. Anne is in love with Bob and Paolo is in love with Anne.  Bob will have nothing to do with Anne and sets her up with Paolo, but his good intentions become the seeds of trouble. 

This film is a masterpiece of elegant manly men and a world of crime that ordinary people never see.  I first saw this movie some twenty years ago and the images and stories within have stayed with me since.  Better qualified film critics have lavished this film with praise for nearly half a century, it has a tragic romantic quality and a dryly humourous, brave performance from Roger Duchesne as Bob.    

Bob’s last caper is to take down the casino at Deauville, which in those post-world war 2 days was the high society resort for wealthy Parisians.  The script manages the feat of getting the gang into the casino when it is empty so the gang can enjoy a dry-run.  Bob le Flambeur must be the only caper movie which has done this. 

So, the caper is set and ready to run.  But there are several strokes of fate still to be played out.  Once again we are several plot twists from the end.  

Bob Le Flambeur is a great film and a passable caper.  Elegant, stylish and sensual in a way that only the French can manage, this is (in my opinion) director Jean-Pierre Melville’s best film.    

Bob Le Flambeur is available in the UK here and in the US here

No 18:  Seven Thieves

A 1960 classic from the great director Henry Hathaway.  Once again we are in the South of France, our caper is the Casino at Monte Carlo and our seven thieves expect to relieve it of 4 million French francs. 

Our thieves are led by an elderly Edward G Robinson, “the professor”, the mastermind of the caper and Rod Steiger, a tough American with an ambiguous past.  Edward G Robinson has summoned the bitter, paranoid Steiger to Cannes for the venture and the mystery of their relationship winds elusively through the entire movie.  The gang are made up of Eli Wallach’s Pancho, a saxophone player and front man and his on-off girlfriend and dancer Melanie (played by Joan Collins).  Collins was 27 when she made this movie and was never more beautiful.  The other three members are a casino insider, a driver and a pretty-boy safecracker.

The casino director’s private secretary, (Reymond Le May) is a weak and lecherous husband obsessed with dancer Melanie.  The professor uses him to get access to the casino on the night of the Governor’s Ball, a high society affair which will act as the cover for their robbery.  They can get in, they know where the money is, they know how to crack the safe.  The important questions are how do they get to the money, how do they hide it once they have it and how do they get out.  The professor’s caper gives them the answers.       

The caper has to be executed precisely, and parts of it are very dangerous.  This is meat and drink to Hathaway, who has already given all of the thieves real personalities, making us love and hate them.  As the caper gets more and more dangerous, cracks start to show and we begin to wonder whether our thieves will have the guts to pull it off.  As always with Hathaway, the interplay between the players is as riveting as the action.  Collins really makes something of her role as Melanie and the growing love affair between Melanie and Steiger’s Paul is believable and enthralling. 

Hathaway winds up the tension as only he can, nothing flashy, just unexpected incidents, little hesitations that increase the pressure on the thieves.  By the time the caper is underway the suspense is tortuous.  As the movie twists and turns towards its end, we are kept guessing until the last.  Classic movie and classic caper.      

Seven Thieves is available in the UK here and in the US here

No: 17 After the Sunset

Starts with a blindingly good caper heist, as jewel thieves Max Burdett and Lola Cirillo (Pierce Brosnan & Salma Hayek) relieve FBI agent Lloyd (Woody Harrelson) of a “Napoleon” diamond.  Great misdirection and smart heist then into the opening credits.

This must be the most easy-on-the-eye caper movie ever.  Brosnan and Hayek retire to an island in the Bahamas to live the good life.  Cue shots of white beaches, calypso bands and rum punches with cocktail umbrellas in them.  One reviewer described this as (Director Brett Ratner’s) caper cum travelogue and there is some truth in that. 

This is mostly a comedy caper.  Our thieves’ retirement is spoilt by two things.  Firstly Brosnan is too restless to settle down, even with Salma Hayek in designer lingerie.  Secondly Harrelson’s Agent Lloyd turns up smarting for revenge and taunts Brosnan with the news that the last Napoleon diamond will soon be in town, the only one Brosnan has not stolen.  The wheels start turning, for the last caper.

After the Sunset is a little mixed.  Brosnan is in superb form and truly funny in his deadpan, wry way.  However Max Burdett has a luxury villa on the beach island and so Brosnan gets to wear a lot of designer linen.  The problem is that Brosnan’s style type is Full Classic (meaning that he needs to wear classic clothes to look good) and the natural linen look makes him look a little ineffectual, a little seedy. 

Selma Hayek is courageous and clever as Lola, giving Brosnan a run for his money in their scenes together.  Don Cheadle plays a nasty island gangster, in a sub-plot that seems way too harsh for this genial movie.  That said, there is one truly funny scene where Cheadle’s gangboss tells Brosnan how he has achieved spiritual enlightenment by listening to the Mommas and Poppas. 

So Brosnan sets up the final caper, with Harrelson sticking to him like a band-aid.  This gives us some comedy bonding, including the two of them drunk and shooting a menacing shark with a police revolver.  On paper, the last caper is good, but by then there is too much going on in the movie and the climax is rushed and loses some of its impact.              

I like this movie, even though it is a caper-lite, it is funny.  There are also 15 seconds in the opening credits especially for Selma Hayek’s male fans.  Brosnan is disco-dancing on the beach with Selma Hayek in a black bikini.  As the band hits its stride Hayek throws her arms wide, arches her back and does a rock and roll shimmy.  You have to see it and once you have seen it you probably want it on a loop….    
 
After the Sunset is available in the UK here and in the US here

No 16: The Hustle

The Hustle inhabits the territory somewhere between caper, heist and murder mystery.  What elevates this movie to the list of good capers is its strong story and unusual characters.  Bobbie Phillips and Stephen McHattie’s small time grifters seem doomed, until a failed scam leaves them with a chance to play the big con.  The con/caper plays out against a backdrop of wealth and New York privilege, with some truly evil players.

The Hustle (not to be confused with Hustle, the Robert Aldrich cop movie with Burt Reynolds) has an original story around family wealth and betrayal and I was a long way into the movie before I worked out what the scam was.  There is a masterly piece of misdirection early on and the story twists and turns with none of the players being what they seem.  As Bobbie Phillips finds out the true nature of the big con, and the depths to which the players will go, she has to think on her feet and make moves of her own, just to stay alive. 

Acting and direction win out here.  Stephen Mchattie does a good job as the grifter out of his depth and Robert Wagner, few though his scenes are, adds some class and heft to the movie.  Bobbie Phillips is a revelation.  She gives a great performance and is strong enough to hold the whole movie together.  As Maya, she is beautiful, ripely sexy and smart, with just an edge of desperation.  Her playing is perfectly pitched, as a woman trying to get out from under and trying to hide her one advantage, her intelligence, from the other protagonists.

The movie just flows and one visceral emotional scene follows another.  With cons spawning more cons and a caper, it would have been easy to get lost in the twists of the plot.  To his credit, Director Stephen Lawrence does not do let this happen, the tempo is right and the plot is easy to follow.  The Hustle has a strong rhythm, moving from con to caper as it progresses. It was really satisfying watching the strands of the con come together, as the good-bad guys try to beat the bad-bad guys. 

This movie is a small well-crafted gem, definitely worth watching.

 The Hustle is available in the UK here and the US here.

No 15: Kelly’s Heroes

Our only war caper in this listing.  Kelly’s heroes had three things going for it.  A good script, a great ensemble cast of American stock actors and of course the cool man himself Mr. Clint  Eastwood. 

In summary, Clint Eastwood kidnaps a Nazi intelligence officer (this is a fun scene) before the opening credits have finished rolling.  The intelligence officer spills the beans on a fortune in Nazi gold, hidden in a bank a few miles behind the front lines.  The intelligence officer dies in a counter-attack and Eastwood is the only one who knows the secret. What to do?

Eastwood decides to mount a clandestine military operation to steal the gold for his own use.  This film could only have been made with Eastwood as the lead.  He was at his peak when Kelly’s Heroes was made and in it he radiates masculine energy and sheer charisma.  Only Eastwood could have got moviegoers to buy into such as outrageous plot. 

And we then get into everything that a caper movie has to do.  Scoping out the opposition, recruiting the team, putting up a false front to fool the legal authorities.  In most movies the trick is to neutralize the alarms.  Kelly’s Heroes is the only caper I know where the gang have to neutralize a Tiger tank.  Kelly and his buddies use some very clever tricks used to confuse and defeat the German garrison.   

The actors have a ball playing off each other, especially with the now famous performance by Donald Sutherland as Oddball, the proto-hippy tank commander.  Sutherland at his most wacked-out is movie gold.  These guys and their cheerful disregard for authority will have you rooting for them in no time.

Kelly’s Heroes looks a little dated now and the atrocious California pop soundtrack is really annoying.  That aside this is a clever movie, quick on its feet and always fun to watch.  One to keep and watch again.  Recommended.

Kelly’s Heroes is available un the UK here and in the US here

No: 14 Ocean’s Thirteen

Ocean’s gang are back and this time it is revenge.  Elliott Gould’s Reuben has been cheated out of his half of a new casino by his partner Willy Bank (Al Pacino as an evil little thug).  Broke, Reuben has a heart attack and Danny Ocean declares revenge.  Ocean and his team plan to break the bank at the casino, on its opening night.  They don’t intend to win but they do intend Pacino to lose, to the tune of 500 millon dollars.   

Well, the obvious question is, is it as good a caper as Eleven and the answer has to be, almost.  Soderbergh and the ensemble cast are old hands at this by now, and Thirteen is sleek, fluid and smooth, the just scenes fly by.   

For caper buffs there are some superb moments.  How to get a magnetron into the secure computer room?  Easy really…   How do you fake an earthquake? Well you clearly need Basher’s (Don Cheadle) mechanical skills but what else?   There are more caper moments than you can shake a stick at and director Soderbergh, keeps them all on track and does not lose us while showing them to us.  Thirteen is complicated but easy enough to follow while retaining the fun that the Ocean movies must have. 

Clooney and Pitt take a bit of backseat this time and let some of the rest of the gang do their stuff.  Saul (Carl Reiner) runs amuck with a fake English accent.  Basher gets some good scenes and Eddie Jemson’s computer geek, Livingston Dell gets to show his stuff.

Good caper.
   
Ocean’s Thirteen is available in the UK here or the US here

No 13:  To catch a Thief

Well, almost the anti-caper.  However even though Cary Grant is trying to solve the jewel robberies rather than carry them out, it is all here.  No better gentleman thief, no sexier society gal.  Exotic locations (The Cote D’Azur in the early 50s), precious jewels, unimaginative policemen. 

Cary Grant’s reformed Riviera jewel thief sets out to find the real jewel thieves and clear his name.  His complications are emotional, as Grace Kelly’s spoiled rich girl falls in love with him.  The final irony is that in the end he needs her help to stage a caper of his own, to expose the thieves.

High style.  Until recently no had done it better. 

To Catch a Thief is available in the UK here and in the US here
 
 

No 12: The Score

One of the things that makes Capers so exciting is that they are never the same twice, unlike say, buddy-cop movies.  Score has a few nice twists on the action and a great ending. 

DeNiro is our caper-meister in Score, a Montreal jazz-club owner who is also a thief and an ace safe-cracker.  Director Frank Oz works a nice riff on his Montreal locations, which are alternately beguiling and harsh.  DeNiro is teamed with Ed Norton, who plays a proud scrappy young thief who is as edgy as DeNiro is risk-averse.  Ed Norton plays well and his aggression sparks nicely off DeNiro’s tough seen-it-all veteran.  Some good acting here and it really draws you in, with DeNiro resisting the job as “too risky”.  

The third player in Score is Marlon Brando, playing DeNiro’s longtime associate, banker and fence.  When the movie came out director Frank Oz got some stick in the reviews, for not making more of the scenes between Brando and DeNiro.  Watching Score it is easy to see that Brando is old and unwell, he looks like an old man dying, which he was.  No director on the planet could have done much with that. 

Fortunately there are only a couple of scenes with Brando in, and the rest of the movie is both tense and tricky.  This is a gadgets, climbing up walls, blueprints and technology caper, all used to great effect and with great integrity.  One of the best things about the Score is that the story is really well told and one becomes convinced that all of the tricks used in the movie would actually work.  The Score itself is a golden sceptre (worth $30 million) locked up in the Montreal customs house.  Getting to the sceptre is tricky, with a few very neat obstacles thrown at our thieving couple.  

Score is colourful, with a variety of tempos.  It keeps you watching and even plays with you a little,   with a lot of character-driven twists.  Like all good caper movies it is smart and has a big finish.  The ending is superb.       

The score is available in the UK here and in the US here.          
  

 No 11: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968 Original)

Four bank robbers are hired by an anonymous mastermind, to rob a Boston bank.  Having never seen each other before the robbery, the gang’s success is dependant on following a meticulous plan.  Incidentally one of the robbers is a very young-looking Yaphet Kotto, years before his success in Blue Collar and Homicide: Life on the Street.  

The Thomas Crown Affair comes alive with the robbery, which is both menacing and slick.  Director Norman Jewison keeps the action moving by making it clear that McQueen is the caper boss, with scenes showing McQueen depositing the loot in a Swiss bank.  The movie then ticks over until Faye Dunaway’s insurance investigator appears on the scene. 

McQueen was the alpha male in this movie.  Wealthy, brave and calculating, he gets into a dance of seduction with Faye Dunaway’s Vicki.  Dunaway is beautiful, with that icy hauteur that works so well for her.  The late sixties were a bad time for style, when flared trousers and hippie vests were in vogue but this film manages to be stylish.  MCQueen’s arbitrageur wears well-cut three-piece suits and Dunaway goes high fashion with a range of designer outfits. 

The Thomas Crown Affair looks good today, primarily due to the cinematography of Haskell Wexler, which has an immediacy that makes the movie look fresh and alive.

The Thomas Crown Affair is available in the UK here and in the US here    

This brings us to the end of my second set of caper movies.  As always, feedback and further movie recommendations welcome. 

 Tomorrow I will post my top ten.   

What are Caper Movies and why do men like them?

Caper Movies are crime movies where smart criminals aspire to take down a big score.  They share common ground with heists and cons.  Heists because Capers are usually robberies, Cons because Capers are all about ingenuity, thinking smart and getting away clean, with violence as a last option.  Capers are high style, classy and witty.  Think the Thomas Crown Affair,, The Score, Ocean’s 11.  Capers know no boundaries, from American smart (Confidence) to French romantic (Rififi) to British cock-a-snook at authority (The Italian Job).  

  The Thomas Crown Affair 

In the movies capers require style, smarts, courage and charm to pull off.  One man, or a team, pit their wits against whatever the other side has, be it state-of-the-art alarms, watertight security, even other crooks who are as smart as they are.  I always loved capers, their gentlemen thieves are more stylish, their crimes more exciting, their long-legged society gals more sexy.   Capers even have more upscale loot, jewels, art, ancient relics or gold bars.  Even when plain old money is the loot, it’s often money with a history.    

Real men like capers.  That’s because our caper hero/villains are successful, sexy, dominant men who play by their own rules.  They are the ultimate alpha males.  They dress well, drink well and are consummate ladykillers.  Irreverent and determined, they succeed at the game of life and make fools of authority.  Some of the best movie actors have distinguished themselves in capers.  De Niro in the Score, Michael Caine in the Italian Job and Sean Connery’s magnificent bastard of a hero, Edward Pierce, in the First Great Train Robbery.  Rogues, charmers and conmen all. 

Real women like caper movies too.  They like successful, intelligent men who who know how to play the world.  They like the high style and the glamour.  Rene Russo impossibly glamourous in the Thomas Crown Affair, Audrey Hepburn timelessly classy in How to steal a Million.  A real women loves the idea of dressing to kill and being on the arm of the man who is going to break the bank at Monte Carlo, in his own inimitable fashion.  If you want to take your best girl to a movie, take her to a caper movie, its a sure bet she will enjoy it.

  How to Steal a Million 

So this series of posts is a dual celebration.  Firstly a celebration of the great capers from movie history. 

Secondly to celebrate the release of a new British caper movie, the Bank Job.    

I will post four articles over the next two days.  They are;

• A celebration of caper movies  plus movies 30-21 (this article)
• Caper Movies 20-10
• Caper Movies 10-1
• A review of the forthcoming Bank Job 

 Below are my pick of the best caper movies of all time.  I have watched them all and love each of them for their own special magic.  Enjoy.

No 30: Art Heist 

This movie takes us to new territory, art robberies in the stylish city of Barcelona.  It must have sounded like a good idea to the investors in this American-Spanish co-production and it should really have worked better than it does.

Ellen Pompeo is an art curator for rich millionaires, who is suddenly catapulted into a series of art caper thefts in Barcelona.  She is feisty and over-reaching but blind to everything except recovering her beloved stolen art.  As the only resource on hand she ends up working with the Barcelona police and goes undercover with the Russian Mafia. 

Her estranged husband, William Baldwin in sleepy cool mode, turns up and despite being 4,000 miles out of his jurisdiction, goes chasing bad guys.  Baldwin gets suckered into a chase where he really gets his lumps, but discovers that the real thieves may not be the obvious suspects.  Baldwin and Pompeo have a determination and a brashness that sets them apart from the Barcelona detectives and it is clear that they will either get the stolen art or it will get them killed. 

The wonderful thing about this movie is the heists.  They are works of art in themselves.  The screenplay hits on the wonderful idea of having the heist carried out by a team of extreme sports fanatics.   The capers/heist are daring, clever to the point of outrageous (but very believable) and use some clever tricks and gadgets.  The thieves parasail, abseil and use the most daring strategems to get the loot.  The takedown team are passionate Spaniards, fit manly men with dark good looks.   We owe a vote of thanks to whoever dreamed up these clever capers.

At times Art Heist’s direction and plot lose their way and there are some dull scenes that a good editor would have cut.  However it is worth seeing for the capers.

Art Heist is available in the UK here and in the US here
           

 No 29:  The Heist

This is a little known caper movie starring a very young Pierce Brosnan.  It is interesting to see Brosnan in his early career while he was still building the persona we know today from later movies like The Thomas Crown Affair.  Even back in the late 70′s when this movie was made he had a commanding presence and held the screen well.

As Neal Skinner, Brosnan is out for revenge.  Framed by his ex-partner (A sleazy Tom Skerritt) Brosnan has spent the last four years in jail, which Skerritt has used as an opportunity to take Skinner’s half of the racetrack they own and to take Skinner’s girlfriend.  Skinner wants it all back, of course. 

This is a movie which takes a long time setting itself up and for a while I thought that this was going to be a caperless caper movie.  Brosnan kicks off his revenge bid by openly telling Skerritt that he is going to take him down.  So there is a lot of time spent recruiting old buddies around the race track, with some pedestrian racetrack scenes thrown in for good measure. 

This was originally a HBO movie and the direction is not as sharp as one would like.  But The Heist is easy to watch, set in California somewhere near San Diego.  That said, the late seventies clothes, especially the tab collar shirts and the pleated pegged trousers, look really dated now.

However once this movie hits the gas, it unleashes a string of fast clever moves amounting to one crazy but crafty caper.  One striking move on Brosnan’s part is to wear a garish red Hawaiian shirt, making it easy for Skerritt’s goons to track him around the race track during the caper.  Brosnan then introduces a tour bus full of men into the track, all wearing the same shirt!  This is so similar to the end sequence of the much later The Thomas Crown affair, where Brosnan deploys men dressed like him, that you have to wonder whether Brosnan took the move to the later movie. 

So a madcap caper, followed by a switch of some hot merchandise, all the major players scrambling to be in the right place when the music stops.  From the start it is pretty clear that Brosnan is the guy who gets what he wants so you can guess the end.  Once The Heist got moving, I liked it a lot.  Lightweight but watchable.  

 The Heist is available (only in the US) here

No 28: Ocean’s Twelve  

After the grace and humour of Ocean’s Eleven this was a disappointment. Twelve was flabby, with a story that got lost somewhere in the middle.  However I wanted to see it because the gang that worked so well had found a place in my heart, even the acerbic Saul (Carl Reiner).

Twelve start out well, with Danny Ocean’s gang forced to reunite by Andy Garcia’s evil casino boss.  Brad Pitt is standout here; his Rusty character is too funny for words as he tries to make it in the world as a luxury hotel entrepreneur.  As you would expect, the early ensemble scenes are great and we feel like the old gang is back in town.  Andy Garcia’s Terry Benedict is demanding his money back with menaces and it is back to work for Ocean’s team.

With America too hot for them, Ocean’s team decamp to Amsterdam, where they decide to steal the world’s oldest stock certificate.  Twelve finds it’s feet here, on classic caper territory, the scenes well paced and exciting.  The certificate is held in a private house, which the paranoid certificate owner has invested with almost impregnable security.  Our gang breaches the house only to find that they have been beaten to the prize by a Frenchman, a thief called the Night Fox.   A good caper, well executed.

This leads the team into a competition with the Night Fox to see who can steal the legendary Faberge coronation egg.  Twelve gets silly here, and with no idea of how to use the team the film contrives to send them to prison one by one. This gets tedious very quickly.

In the end all is well and our guys get out from under.  Good things?  Well, our arrogant French thief (Vincent Cassel) gets his come-uppance.  This is George Clooney’s best scene and goes some way to redeeming Twelve.  The other good thing was that enough caper fans paid money to see Twelve so that it was possible to make Thirteen.     

Ocean’s Twelve is available in the UK here and in the US here     

No 27: The Sicilian Clan      

This 1969 French caper starred Alain Delon, Lino Ventura and Jean Gabin, all real stars of European cinema.  Rarely do caper movies bring together such manly men. 

The plot has Delon’s handsome killer sprung from jail by Gabin’s Italian mob in Paris.  Lino Ventura is the police inspector trying to recapture him.  Delon has the security blueprints for a traveling exhibition of jewels worth $50 million.

The film is as interested in its characters as its caper, and we get to see great actors playing their parts.  Gabin’s Vittorio Manalese is particularly good, a Sicilian godfather who all fear beacuse of his ruthlessness and cunning.  Gabin was 65 when he made the film and only had a few years to live but he moves with a Robert Mitchum-like solidity, silent and menacing. 

Director Henri Verneuil directs the caper with pace and verve, never losing his grip on the story and keeping minor but critical characters in play without losing us, the audience. He ups the ante at the end of the second act when the gang work out that the jewel heist as planned is impossible.  So how can they do it? 

From a man’s (and my) perspective The Sicilian Clan is very stylish.  This movie is a masterclass in how to dress well and a record of those far-off days when Frenchmen instinctively had style.

The movie is marred by an awful Ennio Morricone soundtrack, intrusive and silly.  Towards the end the film gets a little confused, when it cannot decide whether to be a crime caper or a mafia revenge drama.  Still this is a colourful and edgy caper, well worth watching.

The Sicilian Clan is available in the UK here and in the US here 

No 26:  Ocean’s Eleven (The 1960 original)

Frank Sinatra brings together his old world war 2 buddies (a thinly disguised Rat Pack) and on to Las Vegas to rob five casinos in one night.  We mostly know the plot of this film, so I will simply mention what I like about it.   Firstly the film does illustrate the ease and cameraderie of the Rat Pack, their easy ways and old-style manly charm. 

What I find interesting is that Ocean’s Eleven also captures the sense of a band of men, originally joined together by war, who are competent to take down five casinos.  There is a maturity about these men, ex-soldiers, who have no fear of taking on the authorities or the casinos.  Ocean’s Eleven needs enough of an edge to make the caper more than just comic.  The gang’s attitude and worldview provide it.  

Ocean’s Eleven is of course a classic caper and has a nicely comic feel.  If you have not seen it is is one for the collection. 

Ocean’s Eleven is available in the UK here and in the US here  

No 25: Topkapi

A European caper that for a while redefined the genre.  It was all here, a multinational cast, exotic location (Istanbul) and high-class loot (a bejeweled dagger) in a museum equipped with the latest security systems.  Melina Mercouri was the blonde, Maximillian Schell the gentleman thief, Peter Ustinov the bumbling everyman who becomes the vital ingredient in the plan.  All of them were big stars back in 1964. 

The great Jules Dassin directed this comedy adventure, with more than a few humourous pokes at his own Rififi.  Colourful and lighthearted Topkapi takes a while to settle down and the initial plot devices that allow the thieves to meet each other are forced and the first few scenes are noisy and overacted.  Topkapi was shot in English, which was a second language for most of its German, Greek, Turkish and French cast.  So this is one of the most touchy-feely movies around, with gestures, hugs and other body language standing in for spoken lines.   

However once the gang get to Istanbul the film settles into its groove.  The caper is in two parts.  Firstly the gang contrive to lose their police tail.  They do this by going to a Turkish wrestling festival, outwitting their plainclothes escort in the process.  Then they break into the museum and wait until dark. 

Topkapi’s museum has a wired floor which sets off an alarm if anything touches it.  So Schell’s gang send in an acrobat (Gilles Segal) through a skylight, who, suspended on ropes, works the case holding a dummy sultan and a real jewelled dagger. 

The caper is the best part of Topkapi.  Suspended in the air and only able to communicate with his fellow thieves by tugging on the rope, Segal is gradually lowered into the museum and starts the incredibly delicate process of opening the case holding the dagger.  Dassin directed a similar scene in his earlier Rififi and over time had simply got better at it.  The scene is very tense and gets tenser as the strain starts to tell on Segal.  Can the thieves get the dagger and can they get away with the caper?

Topkapi has not aged well but it put in place the model for the comedy crime capers that followed it.  Worth seeing for Peter Ustinov’s comedy Englishman for which he won the best supporting actor Oscar and of course the caper.   
 

Postscript
Topkapi has been chosen as the vehicle for Pierce Brosnan’s Thomas Crown Affair 2, with the movie to be built around the Topkapi story.   This was originally scheduled to be released in 2008 but has been put back due to the US movie screenwriters strike.  A new date has yet to be announced.             

Topkapi is available in the UK here and in the US here  

No 24: The Hot Rock

A comedy caper built around Robert Redford’s cool capermeister.  Recently released from prison, Redford is talked into heisting a huge diamond from a museum by his fast-talking slightly neurotic lockpicking brother-in-law.  They round out the caper team with an oddball getaway driver and an even odder front man. 

The Hot Rock comes with quite a pedigree.  Redford is joined by George Segal as the brother-in-Law, the movie is directed by Peter Yates (of Bullitt fame) and the screenplay is by William Goldman.  With Redford underplaying to Segal’s hyperactive and nervous partner they make a funny team and the movie is consistently played for laughs. 

Redford’s caper style is to create a massive diversion at the museum and while the museum guards are otherwise occupied, spring the diamond.  It is a clever caper that relies on timing as much as technology.  The caper simultaneously succeeds and fails.  To avoid spoilers I wont reveal more here but suffice to say that Redford that to setup and execute two more capers before he is satisfied. 

The fun here is in watching Redford deal with his manic team, as they drive him to distraction.  There is a pure laughs scene where their adrenaline junkie getaway driver flies a helicopter to the site of a caper only to find he has landed on the wrong roof and Redford has to go ask directions of a bystander.  The trick is that Redford’s Dortmunder character applies lateral thing to his capers and this leads to some outrageous solutions to overcome real world obstacles. 

The Hot Rock is a movie with its own unique chutzpah that draws you in and eventually you start to believe in its slightly nutty internal logic.  Fun to watch.

The Hot Rock is available in the UK here and in the US here  

No 23:  Rififi

A classic of French cinema, Rififi has the distinction of being variously described as a heist, a film noir and a gritty French crime movie.  So describing it as a caper puts me a bit out on a limb.  Caper suggests a certain light-heartedness, an irreverent view of life and usually, protagonists who fear nothing.  Rififi is grim and its view of life uncompromising.  There is nothing lighthearted about it though it is a romantic tragedy. 

Rififi has two very important caper characteristics, style (in the form of its leading character) and a terrific jewel heist.  The first is Jean Servais, a wonderful actor who could make the crappiest film worth seeing.  In Rififi he plays the stylish crook Tony le Stephanois, our hero (or anti-hero). 

Tony really is the man, style personified, and director Jules Dassin proceeds to admire him lavishly on celluloid.  

Tony is a gambler, crook, gentleman and the man that other tough men admire.  He is the man who has seen the hard side of life and never given in, yet there is a gentleness and charm in him that his associates do not have.  Courageous, quick, clever and immaculately dressed, he is one of the great caper heroes. 

The second is the heist.  A meticulously planned jewel robbery can only be accomplished by not setting off the store’s alarms.  The alarms can be activated by sound and Dassin uses this plot device to play out a wonderful scene 32 minutes long scene, entirely without dialogue.  This is the most famous scene ever shot in a caper movie, as our three thieves move soundlessly through the jewellery store.  The scene is tense and almost unwatchable; you can feel yourself holding your breath, knowing that one slip will doom this gang.

Rififi is gritty yet still believes in the ideal of the romantic hero, the gentleman gangster.  Because of this it has a special place in my canon of caper movies.  

Classic movie.

Rififi is available in the UK here and in the US here  

No 22: Grand Slam

Grand Slam is a 60′s Italian caper, out of the steal-the-jewels-from-an-exotic-location sub-genre.  A big (for the time) budget affair, with American movie stars in key roles to boost its appeal. 

Grand Slam starts off with the unlikely premise that Edward G Robinson’s elderly professor of English has come up with the prefect jewel heist, after working opposite a precious gems exchange in Rio de Janeiro for the last thirty years.  He goes to old neighbourhood buddy Adolpho Celli, better known (in America and England) as the vicious baddie in the James Bond movie Thunderball.  As a “businessman” (code for Mafia don) Celli agrees to provide the manpower for the caper and there is a delightful scene where the two men go through several rolodexes to find the exact set of men to send to Rio to perform the caper.  Edward G goes off to recruit the men and then fades out of the movie for a while. 

Four men are chosen to go to Rio to pull the caper.  One is an Englishman, a safecracker who masquerades as a butler.  This guy is amazing; he is the perfect Englishman with incredible “Oh dear chap” manners.  The second is an Italian expert on security alarms who is a little wimpy but very smart.  The third is a French Romeo, whose job is to seduce a woman who holds a key that the caper depends on.  The fourth is a German military officer, who is tasked with leading our rather mixed bunch.  The military guy is Klaus Kinski, long before he was famous as a scenery-chewing star.  Watching Grand Slam I was happy to see that, even as a young unknown, Kinski was a scenery-chewing psycho.  This being an Italian movie, all of the men dress as if tailored by Brioni and look very cool.

Once the filling-in is out of the way Grand Slam is good, with some very clever caper devices, including the most inventive use of shaving cream I have ever seen (you have to watch the movie).  The French Romeo seduces the businesswomen (Janet Leigh) who has the special key to the vault and the caper is on, under cover of the Rio carnival.  Grand Slam is really good here and the English safecracker and the Italian alarms expert form a surprisingly stylish and adept team.  The caper is clever, using what was the latest technology for the time.  It is also very tense.  This is not the best-directed movie you will ever see but the caper is well-played and the tension is palpable.

So, the jewels are stolen and the double-crossing starts.  Where do the gems end up?  A movie that keeps you guessing, though a smart person might see a clue at the beginning of the DVD.

Grand Slam is a little dated now and the direction goes off the rails a bit at the end but I really liked it.  Good caper. 

Grand Slam is available in the UK here and in the US here   

No 21:   Entrapment

Entrapment has Sean Connery’s  by-the-rules gentlemen thief team up with Catherine Zeta-Jones insurance investigator.   It starts well with a very clever physics and gadgets heist, with a human fly on the windows of a modern office block.  The fly gets in, steals a Rembrandt and gets away clean.  Great visuals, slick exciting camera work.

Connery plays thief Robert McDougal as a dour ex-military type who is a stickler for rules.  He starts out unimpressed by Zeta-Jones’ Virgina Baker.  This gives Zeta-Jones something to work with and she gives a lively performance in the first third of Entrapment.  Things hot up when Virginia confesses to MacDougal that she is a thief herself and that she wants to pull a big job with him.  Still unconvinced, MacDougal starts to warm up when Virginia demonstrates her athleticism and climbing skills.  He agrees to do the first of her big capers, stealing a gold mask from a Scottish castle, whilst evading state of the art electronic security systems. 

The takedown at the castle is a masterpiece of caper moviemaking.  Zeta-Jones is sexy as hell in a skin-tight catsuit, having to use all of her gymnastic prowess to traverse a room criss-crossed with laser beams.  The camera voyeuristically locks on to Zeta-Jones sinuously sexy body as she stretches and arches around the beams in this now notorious scene.  A great caper, with Zeta-Jones returning to her mentor Connery with the mask.  At this point the movie is firing on all cylinders, our thieves love-hate love affair is throwing out real sparks.  All of the movie to this point is vintage Connery, and huge fun to watch.

Entrapment then moves to Malaysia, where Zeta-Jones intends to rob a “world bank”  by exploiting a millennium computer discrepancy at the first stroke of the new millennium.  Cue a heady and dangerous caper in the Petronas Towers, one of the tallest buildings in the world.  It looks to be successful but the deceits and lies that have been swirling around our pair since the start, begin to close in. 

This is a good but not great caper movie.  For me Entrapment fails in the third act, where too many double-crosses come out of the woodwork and the story exhausts itself trying to tie up the loose ends and still reach an ending.  There is too much of a sense that our leads are being handled by other people and playing out other people’s agendas.  It runs contrary to the first rule of capers, that smart individuals run their own games. 

The second problem is visual.  In Scotland Connery looks and dresses like a handsome middle-aged Scotsman.  In Kuala Lumpur some idiot of a design assistant dresses Connery in trendy linen, which is a style that few men can wear and retain their style or dignity.  Connery is also very badly lit in this part of the film.  As a result he looks old, tired and loses the visual authority he has in the first half of Entrapment. 

A good but not great caper, a must-see for the first half of the movie.    

Entrapment is available in the UK here and in the US here             

Well that is it for capers 30-21.  Later today I will post capers 20-10 and tomorrow 10-01

Feedback welcome, especially recommendations for other capers. 

Caper and heist movies are a favourite of mine.  Stylish men, clever crimes and beautiful women.  Caper movies are difficult to make, the logistics of making them are tricky, getting the tone and the pace right is even trickier.  But they are irresistible, promising excitement, danger and adventure.

With that in mind I am keenly awaiting a new British caper movie The Bank Job.  With a great cast including action movie star Jason Statham and David Suchet and directed by Roger Donaldson, The Bank Job looks like a winner.  If we can talk pedigrees for a moment Jason Statham already has a track record in caper movies, having played “Handsome Rob” in F Gary Gray’s classy remake of the Italian Job.  Roger Donaldson also directed the superb The World’s Fastest Indian and has a great eye for character and a reputation for getting great performances from his actors. 

General Release Date and Trailers

The Bank Job is released on the 28th February and What Makes A Man will be reviewing it before its general release.  We will also be posting our own tribute to Caper movies, check back over the next seven days to see our posts.   To see the trailer for the Bank Job, click on any of the links below: 

Windows Media      

High Definition Trailer

Medium Definition Trailer

Low Definition Trailer

Real Player

High Definition Trailer

Medium Definition Trailer

Low Definition Trailer

Well, No Country for Old Men won BAFTA awards for direction, cinematography and best supporting actor (Javier Bardem) so here is my review of the movie.  Above all this is a movie about men and how they live and it says something about what makes a man. 

Cormac McCarthy’s treatment of men has always engaged me and raised (for me) important questions about life, courage and honour.  Also I was intrigued by the idea of the Coen brothers directing NCFOM, I suspected their vision of evil might be bleak enough to do justice to McCarthy’s oddyssey into a modern hell. 

Like the book, the movie opens with a voiceover of Texas Sherriff Ed Tom Bell, one of NCFOM’s three main protagonists.   The sherriff is not present in the scene, which shows the arrest of the monstrous psychopath Anton Chigurh.  From here the movie moves to pick up the third member of this trinity, a tough good ole boy named Llewllyn Moss.  Moss is out hunting in the West Texas badlands when he comes across the mother of all drug double-crosses.  Shot-out pickup trucks, dead men, dead dogs, lots of guns, blood.  Great soaking pools of blood.

Moss is savvy enough to know that there must be one man left standing.  He tracks him across the scrub plain, finds him bled-out and dead, clutching a briefcase with 2.4 million dollars in it.  In that moment he knows that if he takes the money it comes with a huge amount of trouble. 

He takes the money.  The scene is set for a brutal and relentless chase across Texas.

Sherriff Ed Tom Bell is the moral heart of the movie, a good man adrift in a world that is increasingly evil.  His folksy down-home manner encourages the audience to laugh at him but it soon becomes apparant that he sees more deeply and is smarter than anyone else in the movie.  Tommy Lee Jones has played this kind of character before and here he plays it to perfection. 

Chigurh as played by Javier Bardem is a piece of concentrated evil.  A souless killer, Chigurh is a walking embodiment of violent nihilism, who believes that good and evil are social constructs that only fools obey.  This man is the evil that pursues people in their nightmares.  He is inescapable.

Types of Men         

NCFOM plays out across four types of men.  Moral men, like the sherriff, are at a loss as to how to combat mexican hard drugs and the social breakdown they bring with them. 

Chigurh forms the second group, a compressed diamond of pure malevolence, who operates almost unchallenged. 

Then there are the tough men, like Llewllyn Moss.  Moss and Chigurh’s supposed “handler” Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson, underplaying for once) believe that life is about manly virtues, physical toughness and the ability to fight.   Josh Brolin’s Moss has just the right amount of leathery toughness to make him believable.  Harrelson as Wells has more than enough meanness of spirit.  What hampers them is their inability to understand the nature of evil.   

The last group is interesting.  They are the ordinary folk, connected to the hunt or not, who get caught up in it.  One of things that determines whether they live or die is their ability to recognise and acknowledge evil.          

The Coens have built an almost perfect integrity between their movie and McCarthy’s novel, translating his vision of violence and desperation into a bleached out 1980′s Texas horror.  This is real drama, no contrived shootouts or conventional characters.  This movie imprints its images on your brain.

Sherriff Bell looks for salvation.  The victory he finds is that good men endure, regardless of the Chigurhs.  It does not sound like a lot, but after this movie has dragged us through hell, it feels like that is all there is. 

A great movie, powerful and very very brave. 

I sometimes eat breakfast in a cafe in North London.   Once or twice a month I have a meeting near Finsbury Park.  When I do, I eat breakfast at a particular cafe.

Somerset Maugham, the English man of letters, once said “If you want to eat well in England you have to eat breakfast three times a day”.  Indeed breakfast is the one meal that English cafes always (almost always) do well. 

The cafe owner is a quietly handsome man, slight of build, with a friendly face and always a slight smile.  He has dark skin and dark eyes and I guess he is around thirty.  I was told that though he has lived in England most of his life, he and his family came to England as immigrants.  His English is accented but precise. 

He is the cook as well as the owner, always working in the long open kitchen that stretches back from the counter.  His family used to take orders and wait table but now a blonde Polish girl does it. 

His breakfasts are a work of art.  The bacom is moist with just the right amount of crispness, the fried mushrooms plump and free of grease, the eggs fried perfectly with hot yellow yolks, the hash browns crispy and golden, warm and melting on the inside.

Sometimes he multi-tasks, working both the counter and the kitchen.  I wish him a good morning, he smiles and returns his own good morning and asks me what I want to eat. 

We both enjoy our simple exchanges.  He clearly has a definite view of what good manners are and an unspoken expectation that a man should have them.  I have the same expectation and enjoy the cordial politeness of English manners.  I remember the first time I complimented him on his food and he was clearly pleased.  Over time we have built a connection solely around mutual courtesy.

I ate there last week after an absence of two months.  I was surprised when he left the kitchen and personally served me breakfast.  We exchanged good mornings and he then told me how pleased he was to see me and how good it was that I was back in his restaurant.  I was touched by his gesture.  The moment was a gift, to be remembered.

It was the perfect demonstration of the value of manners.  Two men respectfully acknowleding each other, bridging their separate selves with common courtesy.

In London, with its sense of time running out and people consumed by work, good manners and the consideration of others can be a momentary oasis in a desert of anonymity.

Good manners are inseparable from style.   

I recently had occasion to visit the eastern end of London’s Square Mile and found myself walking through Artillery Passage, one of the historic old alleys near Spitalfields.  Artillery Passage is becoming a street of some style, with both Salts English Tailoring and Alexander Boyd Bespoke shirts at the eastern end, not to mention John Marengo suitmakers one street South. 

Salts were new to me so I was curious.  I entered the shop and was lucky enough to get some time with Richard Wainwright, one of the two master tailors who head up Salts.  

Salts make English cut made-to-measure suits.  Richard is a master tailor, trained in Savile Row with a pedigree spanning some of London’s best bespoke tailors.   He and his team can design and make a made-to-measure suit in a very swift five weeks.  

Richard showed me some of their suits and they specialise in a crisp, distinctive city suit.  That said, they are very versatile tailors and their designs span the spectrum of good tailoring, from English cut through to lighter, silkier Italian style suits.   Their suits are sharp, slim and very flattering.  They remind me quite a bit of the suits of Tom Sweeny, the Mayfair tailor who is getting lots of praise at the moment.

What is striking about Salts is their in-depth understanding of what a city suit needs to do.  They know how to build a suit for those mad jobs where you fly out of London to a foreign city, work all day and then go to dinner with clients in the evening, and the suit has to look good through all of it.  

Richard Wainwright, Master Tailor 

With this type of wear in mind, Richard showed me how he can make a suit with a heavier internal canvas, using light but strong English wool worsteds, to be both stylish and hardwearing.  The suit is elegant and sharp but has the guts to take a lot of punishment and hold its shape. 

These gentlemen are can-do tailors, they are plain speaking and professional and they understand the needs of City businessmen.  They are smart too.  Their suits are made up by master tailors in Poland, in a traditional tailoring factory that Salts have sole use of.   This ensures excellent cutting and finishing and very keen prices.    

Salts’ handmade ties 

Salts make a range of bespoke gentlemen’s clothing from tuxedos to summer jackets, as well as ties, shirts and shoes.  For a craftsman tailors’ they have an extremely large range of cloths and fabrics to choose from, including some very distinctive weaves that are proprietary to their company.   For around £1,200 they will make you one of their superb hand-made suits.  You can either visit their shop or, if you work in the Square Mile, arrange for their visiting tailor to come to your office. 

If you work in the City and you are in the market for a suit, go visit these gentlemen.  They speak our language.   

Salts         10 Artillery Passage, London E1 7LJ

Tel:             44 (0)20 7377 9604

Website:     www.saltsmill.com