The 10 Best Heist Movies Ever Made

Michael Mann's crime epic pits Al Pacino's obsessive detective against Robert De Niro's meticulous thief. The downtown bank robbery and street shootout set the standard. Claude and Gemini both put it at #1.

Jules Dassin's French noir contains the famous half-hour jewel-store burglary, performed without dialogue or music. It shaped nearly every heist film after it. ChatGPT had it as its #1.

Sidney Lumet's tense, funny, human drama turns a botched bank robbery into a media circus. Al Pacino is electric as Sonny, and the film trades slick planning for chaos and pathos.

Stanley Kubrick's racetrack heist noir splits the robbery into a fractured timeline, showing the plan from several angles. Lean, cynical and sharp, it's a blueprint for later crime films.

Steven Soderbergh's Vegas caper is the genre at its coolest: a star-packed crew, a casino vault, and a script that never stops grinning. It made heist movies fun again for a new generation.

George Roy Hill's Depression-era con comedy reunites Paul Newman and Robert Redford for an elaborate scam on a mob boss. Charming, twisty and ragtime-scored, it's a long-con classic.

John Huston's 1950 noir follows a gang of crooks through a jewel robbery and its messy aftermath. It helped establish the heist template: assemble the crew, pull the job, watch it unravel.

Spike Lee's slick thriller has Denzel Washington negotiating with Clive Owen's bank robber, and nothing is quite what it seems. Smart, stylish and full of misdirection, it's a modern crowd-pleaser.

Jean-Pierre Melville's cool, fatalistic French crime film brings together an escaped convict, a gangster and a former cop for a jewel heist. Its silent, precise robbery sequence is pure Melville.

Michael Caine leads a London crew plotting a gold bullion theft, and the Mini Cooper getaway through Turin is iconic. Swinging-sixties style, a famously cheeky cliffhanger ending, and loads of fun.