54321: 5 Biggest Heist Movie Cliches

Cinema history has seen a lot of great heist movies. Take, for instance, the original Thomas Crown Affair, or the original Italian Job, or even the original Ocean's Eleven. Heck, those movies were so cool that even their remakes were a lot of fun to watch. There is just something about a carefully planned heist, even though the genre does have it's fair share of cliches. But if a heist movie is well made, you not only don't mind the cliches, you even expect them to be in it. I wonder how many of these cliches are going to pop up in this weeks new heist movie, Ocean's Thirteen!

1. A new member is introduced at the last minute, right before the heist is being pulled off. This is always a character who is a bit shady. Sure, he acts friendly enough and he is expert, but something is off about him. Still, the leader of the team will have to go with him, since one of the other members of the team has dropped out at the last minute, being caught by the police/feeling guilty/being killed. Invariably, this new member will then indeed turn out to be untrustworthy, working for rival heisters, the owners of the material that is to be heisted, or the police, almost messing up the whole operation. Almost.

2. In almost every good heist movie, you have one character who seems to be a bit looney, and who loves blowing up things. Most of the times this person is a bit def, which makes his character even more quirky, and which always comes from him using too much explosives during one heist a long time ago, a feat that he will refer to many times throughout your movie. Most of the times this character even has a goofy name, like Sniffles or Ears, or something like that.

3. At the last minute, the carefully planned heist almost goes wrong. I cannot remember seeing too many heist movies where this didn't happen. How can a carefully planned heist not almost go wrong at the last minute? Most of the times, the heist has been done, and at the meetup point a cop is waiting for them, or a rival who has just killed Sniffles or Ears and taken all the money, or the shady character from cliche 1 turns out to work for the enemy. Of course, in the end, things always turn right, with the heroes riding away with the money in an expensive sports car. They wave at the person who tried to catch/double cross them, and then that person always gets caught by the police themselves right after.

4. There's a femme fatale who has a history with both the good guys and the bad guys. How else can it be a femme fatale? And of course, she always falls for the good guys, unless she is the bad guy/gal herself, in which case she almost always makes off with the money.

5. Whenever an item that needs to be stolen is protect by those cool red laser beams, somebody will almost always step through them at the last moment. Or drop the diamond that is supposed to be stolen. Or that piece of unbreakable wire that holds them from the ceiling proves to not be that unbreakable after all. Cue the hero swallowing deeply, sweating profusely and saying something like "This is going to be my last job, I'm getting too old for this."

Read more: Ocean's 13

Comments

[Die Hard (1988)]

Thank you for sharing biggest heist movies. I love your post. And I agree with you on each and every pont. There is lot of heist movies in cinema history that has been made fantastic.

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Excellent post, it is interesting to see how many movies entered the category of heist movies.

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The only cliche I don't hate is the Femme Fatale anything else is just bullshit.

[manolo blahnik]

I just sent this post to a bunch of my friends as I agree with most of what you’re saying here and the way you’ve presented it is awesome.