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.