The best heist movies: ten perfectly planned nights

The heist film is the purest competence fiction there is: assemble specialists, define the impossible job, and let us watch professionals work the problem. The great ones share four parts - a crew with chemistry, a plan you can half-follow, one complication nobody planned, and respect for the audience. These ten have all four. No spoilers below; the twists stay in the vault.

The ten

The Killing (1956)

Stanley Kubrick, age 28, already in full command: a racetrack robbery planned with clockwork precision, narrated like a countdown. Every modern heist film is standing on this one's shoulders.

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

The vibe blueprint. Soderbergh assembles the coolest crew ever filmed, robs three Las Vegas casinos at once, and makes it look effortless - which was always the point. The definition of rewatchable.

Heat (1995)

Michael Mann's epic: the planner (De Niro) and the detective (Pacino) circling each other across a Los Angeles that has never looked better. The downtown shootout and the bank job are two of the most studied sequences ever shot - and the coffee-shop scene outdraws both.

Ronin (1998)

Hired specialists in Nice chase a briefcase nobody will open, and trust turns out to be the rarest commodity on screen. The car chases are still the benchmark - real cars, real streets, real fear.

The Italian Job (1969 - and honestly, the 2003 remake)

The original robs Turin with three Mini Coopers and a traffic jam; the remake moves the job to Los Angeles and keeps the cheek. Different heists, same rule: the getaway IS the job.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

A Brooklyn bank robbery that goes wrong in the first hour and becomes a street carnival. Based on a true story; Al Pacino at full voltage. The heist movie that insists the plans never survive contact with people.

Inside Man (2006)

Spike Lee's cleanest puzzle: a bank robbery with no visible robbery, a detective (Denzel Washington) who smells a script, and an ending that re-deals the whole hand. The modern classic of the form.

The Town (2010)

Charlestown, Boston - the bank-robbery capital of America - and one last job for a crew that cannot stop being themselves. Ben Affleck directs with a documentary eye; the Fenway Park job is a stomping set piece.

Baby Driver (2017)

Edgar Wright builds the entire film inside the getaway driver's headphones: every stunt, gunshot and gear-change lands on the beat. The heist film as musical, and somehow it all works.

Logan Lucky (2017)

Soderbergh returns to the form with a NASCAR heist run by the least glamorous crew imaginable - two brothers, a hairdresser, and a convict who plans jobs from memory. The funniest heist film ever made, and sneaky-smart with it.

Where to go next

More crews, cars and controlled chaos live on the action shelf at the browse desk, and the puzzle-plot cousin of this list sits with the mind-benders on the same shelves. Planning a group screening? Films for a group settles the vote, and the sixty-second method picks between these ten in one pass.