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The Heist Movie
Heist movies like The Thomas Crown Affair (1966) in which our
theme song, partly reproduced above, was featured. This is a relatively
simple complex movie as such movies go. Steve McQueen's gentleman burglar
is planning and executing his thefts, while being chased by Faye Dunaway. Like its close contemporary,
The Thief Who Came to Dinner, Thomas Crown made no attempt
to take itself or its formulas seriously. The best things about it were
the taut scripting and some of the bit players. Neither McQueen nor Dunaway are all that great but the movie
is fun - and that is the aim of such pieces. We're not talking about deep
philosophy here: heist movies are meant to entertain first and foremost.
Most heist movies, like Jules Dassin's two masterpieces, Rififi (1955) and its more humorous cousin,
Topkapi (1964), follow a formula as predictable as the villagers'
behavior when confronted by the mad scientist's experiments. Rififi is sui generis.
Being the original template it doesn't quite follow the pattern that developed in
its imitators. The gritty monochrome crime thriller is centred on the heist sequence, over half-an-hour
of taut drama with no background music and only those incidental accidental sounds made
by the villains. And the central character is more complex than his successors. Topkapi
was more the template for the surfeit of imitators. A planning genius
plots out an arcane plan, recruits a diverse group of thieves and villains
and puts them through a series of unexplained training exercises that
divulge little or nothing about the heist itself. The movie climaxes with
an incredibly long and suspenseful sequence in which the robbery is carried
through to fruition. In addition, in most of these movies, there is also
an very long anti-climax where it all falls apart and the gang (and its
loot) are rounded up.
Topkapi, with its international cast and exotic settings, and
Rififi, with its incredibly stretched robbery sequence, are the
epitome of these labyrinthinely-plotted heist movies. But a couple of
less serious entries are, to me, more worthwhile. How to Steal a Million
(1966) in which Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn combine to pinch a "Cellini
Venus" is the champion of the farcical end of the spectrum. And,
because it makes fun of the elaborately contrived rituals of the heist
movie, even while rigorously applying them, it is ultimately a more satisfying
movie. This is despite its very sixties' look and feel that derogates
from its success thirty years on. But the irresistible combination of
two great stars, Hepburn and O'Toole, just about in their primes, balances
those concerns and the overacting of French comedians in minor roles.
It even makes up for Hugh Griffiths, the 60s' great scenery eater, mugging
and pulling faces in the background. The advantage of a great script and
Wiiliam Wyler, who'd directed Hepburn in her best light comedy, Roman
Holiday, is inestimable.
Another favourite which plays around with the heist movie cliches while
creating a different feeling is The First Great Train Robbery (1979),
in which Sean Connery is the criminal mastermind and Donald Sutherland
and Lesley Anne Down his loyal underlings. Set in a detailed evocation
of the Victorian era, which Michael Crichton creates with loving care
for the society, the culture and the criminal argot, the central robbery
takes place on a moving train, adding some extra excitement to the expected
suspense of the heist sequence.
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An aside on formulas
The problem is that these movies infrequently rise above their material.
Formulaic movie making is safe movie making because the maker is providing
the audience with a product that it has demonstrated that it wants. The
expense involved in movie-making - especially talking pictures - has meant
that most producers have turned to the formulaic. In the thirties it was
the low budget horror movie and the crime melodrama; in the forties, the
war story; in the fifties, the western and the low budget sci-fi thriller;
in the late fifties and sixties, the heist movie had its day. Today, the
formulaic movie is again the schlock horror movie, although these days
it's promoted as "ironic" or "post-modern", which
translates as, "We made it straight but it's so laughable you'll
accept we were trying to be cute."
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Heat
The best movies avoid or play against these formulas (although the odd
one, like Casablanca, uses them and rises above them). The best
movie of the 90s not to be even nominated for an Academy Award - indeed,
one of the best two or three movies of the decade - played around with
the formulas of the labyrinthine-plotted heist movie and then worked both
with them and against them. Michael Mann's Heat (1995) is essentially
that variant of the heist movie in which the big robbery is planned but
the cops are on to the suspects and have them under observation. It brings
together, for the second time in a movie, but the first time on screen
together, two of the great modern screen actors, Al Pacino and Robert
De Niro.
Mann is a stylish director, despite learning his trade on Miami Vice.
His first essay into the territory, the elegant but sparse adaptation
of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon (released as Manhunter), demonstrated
an understanding of the medium and an ability to co-ordinate the various
aspects of it. The Last of the Mohicans was also a stylish and
well-contrived historical adaptation in which Mann showed that he could
put together a chase sequence that was awesome.
Heat shows that Mann is even better than the first movie might
have suggested or his western hinted at. In Heat, he has the climactic
heist as the centre-piece of the movie and the second half is the tracking
down. The heist itself is not the elaborately played out trope of Rififi
or its ilk, but rather more business-like than that. It does not involve
a clean getaway and then the falling apart of the gang - another cliche
of the genre. Instead, we have the police right on the track of the criminals
and, in the modern twist on the old standards, the shoot-out is both dramatic
and bloody.
The essence of the success of Heat is that the central characters,
the criminals and their nemeses, are all flawed individuals with relationship
problems. There is something more here than the planning and execution
of the crime and the inevitable capture of the criminals. Their girlfriends
and wives might fill secondary roles but their existence is very important
to the plot.
Unlike many formulaic heist pictures where the planning and execution
of the robbery and the inevitable disintgeration of the gang mean that
there is little time for character development, the male leads in Heat
are given depth and interest as a result of their attachment to their
women. Pacino's cop is self-destructive and has a corrosive effect on
his wife and daughter. De Niro's robber is so self-contained that the
possibility of his feeling for another gives a dimension not often found
in the type. And Val Kilmer's marriage sets him apart from his fellows
and leads to his redemption.
It is this additional dimension to the drama, created by the relationshiips
and the women which makes the audience far more involved in the story.
It may be the violence and blood of the robbery scene that turned off
the critics and Academy voters, it's hard to tell. But Heat, using
the central elements of the labyrinthinely-plotted heist movie, is one
of the great modern movie experiences.
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[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists
and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet
Movie Datebase (IMDb). I am not going to provide a link for each movie
mentioned.] |
