All language subtitles for S01E02 - The Heist

This programme contains
very strong language

It was the bank
that couldn't be robbed,

the vault that couldn't be broken,

the security system
that couldn't be hacked.

Until they came on to the scene,

a crack team assembled
by a mastermind,

each one a specialist in the field,
a master of their chosen art.

They had a plan.

They knew the security systems.

They were dangerous.

They were doing it for love,
justice, and money,

and they knew how to make
a quick getaway.

But getting away with it
was only half the job.

Keeping it together
would be something else.

In this series, I'm looking at some
of cinema's most enduring genres,

from the romcom
to the horror movie.

I'll be exploring the conventions

which underwrite
the movies we love the most

and examining the techniques
film-makers use

to keep us coming back for more.

And tonight, I'm going to
show you how to pull off

the perfect heist movie.

Working on the law of averages,

most of you watching this programme
will be law-abiding citizens.

Mostly. But the chances are that
many of you will also have secretly

dreamed of getting one over
on the system.

Whether it's discreetly
fiddling your tax returns

or audaciously scamming
a bank for millions,

everyone has daydreamed about
the possibility of somehow

outwitting the corporate bigwigs.

As Louis Calhern's Alonzo Emmerich
points out in The Asphalt Jungle...

Crime is only a left-handed form
of human endeavour.

So it's no surprise that
crime stories strike a chord,

returning time and again to
a series of common themes

and recurrent traits that
are brilliantly encapsulated

in John Huston's 1950 classic.

The Asphalt Jungle is
one of the first films

to establish
the basic story elements

that would go on to form
the conventions of the genre.

Armed suspect. Tall man, Caucasian,
wearing a dark suit and soft hat...

It's a classic American film noir
with stark, angular photography,

and starker dialogue.

It's the tale of bighearted
hooligan Dix Handley,

played by Sterling Hayden...

Hello? Hello, Dix? Yeah.

..who gets wrapped up in a caper
planned by Sam Jaffe's

criminal mastermind
"Doc" Irwin Riedenschneider.

Make your way up the back stairs
and jump the alarm system.

That'll take another three minutes.

At exactly 11:54, Dix and I
will come to the back door.

You open it first.

This, by the way,
is an early appearance

of a now commonplace obstacle -
the invisible alarm system.

Here's the electric eye.

The raid needs the specialist skills
of a hand-picked bunch of crooks.

Here goes.

The plan to rob a jeweller's shop
will net at least half-a-million

in diamonds, but the robbery
doesn't quite go according to plan.

One of the gang members
gets shot during the getaway...

Follow me.

..and gradually everything
starts to fall apart.

Sounds familiar?

Well, it should do - it's
the basic plot of a heist movie.

Let's look at the elements
that make up that plot

in a little more detail.

In the first four scenes
of the first act,

we meet three key characters,

Sterling Hayden's hooligan,

James Whitmore's getaway driver,

and Sam Jaffe's criminal mastermind.

Louis Calhern's criminal financier
enters midway through.

And the first act ends
with a planning sequence

featuring the whole gang.

The second act is taken up with
a dramatic sequence describing

every intricate detail of the raid

that is also
a nail-biting race against time.

Finally, the third act follows the
demise of the gang as, one by one,

they're either killed or arrested.

Like every good genre structure,

this basic plot has proved
remarkably adaptable

to different settings,
characters and concerns.

Some film-makers have particularly
enjoyed using the heist narrative

as a springboard to explore
the moral ambiguities of crime

and to play with our sympathies.

With that in mind,
take a look at this opening scene

from the Hughes Brothers'
Dead Presidents,

in my opinion, one of
the best and most overlooked

American movies of the '90s.

It opens with a black screen...

GUN COCKS

..and the sound of
a gun being cocked.

GUN COCKS

As the score starts to pulse,

we see a slow-mo image of a face
painted white like a skull,

scanning the barrel of a gun.

The score picks up the pace,

and we fade to a montage
of burning banknotes,

the dead presidents
engulfed in flames.

Everything about the scene tells us

that these are dangerous people,
hungry for money.

But then, the film
flashes back several years

to the north-east Bronx of 1968

to show us how
these people got here.

Man, what's taken you so long?
It's cold as a mother out here.

I had to get the last stop.
Be quiet, punk.

Come on, man, I'm freezing
my fucking nuts out here.

Mush, mother, mush!

The rest of the movie
follows the progress

of Larenz Tate's Anthony Curtis,

a victim of circumstances
beyond his control.

Listen here.
Keep that motor running.

I'll just be a minute, yeah.

Dead Presidents shows us how
this utterly sympathetic character

could cross the line that would
put him on the wrong of the law.

WOMAN SCREAMS

And one of the ways it tells
that story is through

a brilliant juxtaposition of images

which juggles timeframes to
extraordinarily dramatic effect.

Look at this edit,
which, for my money,

is one of the most powerful
jump cuts of modern cinema.

POLICE RADIO CHATTER

GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

As Anthony runs through the Bronx
back yards of his youth,

the Hughes brothers cut to
the battlefields of Vietnam

to which tens of thousands of young
African-Americans were drafted.

Brutalised by war,

Anthony returns home to find
his service is sorely undervalued,

and he's drawn into crime.

You might not immediately think of
Dead Presidents as primarily

a heist movie but at the heart
of its narrative is a heist,

the event with which the film opens
and to which it returns.

Self, inside...

Many of the conventions we saw
in The Asphalt Jungle

also feature here.

Anthony recruits a gang and we
watch them planning their bank job.

I want you to position yourself
approximately ten...

But by the time we see
the robbery play out in full,

we know this is as much a story

about the African-American
experience as it is about a heist.

What's intriguing is the way
that the Hughes Brothers,

who are extremely cine-literate
film-makers...

..take that familiar
mainstream motif

and then twist it to
their own personal ends...

..playing with our
genre expectations,

putting new riffs on an old tune.

Dead Presidents is an example of
the harder edge of the heist movie.

But there's also
a more playful side,

one that enables us to indulge

our illicit lawbreaking
fantasies for fun.

So, let's explore those classic
building blocks of the heist

in more detail,

beginning with a particular
character type who's come to embody

our secret criminal aspirations.

Look at this opening sequence

from Basil Dearden's 1964 film
The League Of Gentlemen.

The brooding street shot
from a low angle

could come from The Asphalt Jungle.

But now, watch this.

Here's Jack Hawkins
emerging from a drain...

..and he's dressed in
a spotless dinner suit.

Hawkins is playing
Lieutenant Colonel Norman Hyde,

in many ways the epitome
of the heroic rogue,

the character who we may just
have seen emerging from the gutter

but who we know
instinctively has class.

Now, let's jump 41 years
into the future to the opening

of Steven Soderbergh's
Ocean's Eleven.

Good morning.

Good morning. Please state
your name for the record.

Daniel Ocean.
Thank you.

Coming to the end of
a five-year stretch,

George Clooney's character is also
about to emerge from the underworld.

While this was your
first conviction,

you have been implicated,
though never charged,

in over a dozen other
confidence schemes and frauds.

Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven
is a loose remake

of the 1960 Frank Sinatra vehicle,

which was itself a Rat Pack Vegas
relative of The League Of Gentlemen.

With both Hyde and Ocean,
we know from the outset

that these are shady,
untrustworthy characters

involved in the sort
of double-dealing

that we'd all avoid in real life.

Mr Ocean, what do you think
you would do if released?

UPBEAT JAZZ PLAYS

But the movies cast them
as lovable rogues,

charming criminal masterminds

in whose company we'd be more than
happy to spend some time.

Notice how, to the strains of
a finger-popping sound track,

Clooney also surfaces from this
underworld wearing a dinner suit.

When Jack Hawkins
emerged from that drain in 1960,

he was taking the heist movie away
from those dark shadows

of the noir thriller into something
altogether lighter, the crime caper,

a playful examination of lawlessness
which allows us to indulge

our own criminal fantasies.

Within this caper mould,

figures like Hawkins and Clooney are
heroic characters with whom we'd

feel safe in the knowledge
that it's all harmless fun.

Harmless because
the people they are robbing will,

A, deserve it in some way,

usually cos they're actually
much worse bad guys

than the criminals with
whom we side,

or, B, will be
covered by the insurance

and effectively won't lose
a thing, apart from their pride.

So, the masterminds of these heist
capers are modern-day Robin Hoods,

and their appeal taps
into deep-seated folk myths.

Going down.

THEY SPEAK FRENCH

But just as not all heist
movies are capers,

not all masterminds
are lovable outlaws.

Here are your names.

Mr Brown.

They can be paternal mob
bosses dispensing tough love,

like Lawrence Tierney
in Reservoir Dogs.

Mr Pink. Why am I Mr Pink?

Because you're a faggot, all right!

Or a more aggressive version
of the gentleman crook

like Ian McShane's
Teddy Bass in Sexy Beast.

Now I'm all right.

Sometimes, they're just ordinary
people like you or me,

people who have been pushed too far

and aren't going to
take it any more,

and will go to extraordinary
lengths to rob a bank...

I said, we're closed, bozo.

I wouldn't.

..as with Bill Murray's town planner
who turns criminal mastermind

in Quick Change.

Hugh...

..let's not mess with me today.

OK? I'm robbing the bank.

What the hell kind of
a clown are you?

The crying on the inside kind,
I guess.

Now, you may have noticed
from that quick round-up that

there aren't that many women
masterminds in heist movies.

Since the '50s, women have tended
to play a less-than-dominant role,

usually billed as the moll,

epitomised by Marilyn Monroe, who
got her big break in All About Eve

after playing Alonzo Emmerich's
absurdly young mistress

in The Asphalt Jungle.

I had the market send over some
salt mackerel for you.

I know how you love it
for breakfast.

Some sweet kid.

Generally, if you wanted to find
strong female characters

in a crime movie, you had to look
to the ruthless femme fatales

of film noirs like Double Indemnity
with Barbara Stanwyck.

There's a speed limit
in this state, Mr Neff. 45mph.

How fast was I going, officer?

I'd say around 90.

Suppose you get down off your
motorcycle and give me a ticket?

Suppose I let you off with
a warning this time?

Suppose it doesn't take?

Suppose I have to
whack you over the knuckles?

Suppose I burst out crying and
put my head on your shoulder?

Suppose you try putting it
on my husband's shoulder?

That tears it.

And you can find the descendants of
those '40s noir heroines

in the modern heist movie Bound,

a brilliant '90s crime picture
from the Wachowskis,

who went on to direct
the Matrix trilogy.

Call the elevator.

Thanks.

The movie is a great example
of how film-makers

can wrong-foot their audience...

..by setting up stock conventions
and turning them on their heads.

In Bound, Gina Gershon and
Jennifer Tilly occupy roles which,

in traditional crime movies,
would be powerless.

Yet the Wachowskis
reassign those roles.

I'm trying to seduce you.

Why?

Because I want to.

Gershon's character Corky
is written as if male,

a variant on Robert Mitchum roles
from films like Out Of The Past,

Where Danger Lives, and Angel Face,

in all of which Mitchum plays
the femme fatale's fall guy.

All I want is you.

I can't let you go now, I won't.

It's no good, I tell you,
I'm not getting involved.

Involved in what?

How stupid do you think I am?

You hate that woman and some day

you're going to hate her
enough to kill her.

Tilly's character Violet is
presented as a traditional moll

but transitions into mastermind.

I want out.

Again, more often a male role.

Wait a minute. Violet, do you
know what you're saying?

You're asking me to help you
fuck over the mob.

Making the nominal mob boss husband
the powerless figure.

Get me another drink.

Bound follows Corky and Violet
as their relationship blossoms

and they pull off a heist that
makes schmucks of her husband

and the puffed-up
Mafiosi around him.

What is this?

Don't! Don't you fucking move!

What makes Bound
even more intriguing

is that its writer-directors
are both trans women

who made the film
when they were still known

as the Wachowski brothers.

You think you could set me up? Huh?

With one foot in the crime movie
and another in the erotic thriller,

Bound plays with
our expectations of a genre

which is far more slippery
than it may at first seem.

You don't know shit.

Most importantly,

it tells us that the so-called rules
of the genre exist to be broken.

Often they're just waiting
for someone brave enough

or smart enough to do it.

You'll remember that we left our
Robin Hood figures, George Clooney

and Jack Hawkins, as they emerged
from the underworld into the light.

But how did they
assemble their gangs

and what sort of oddball gets picked
for a heist movie's criminal crew?

Look at Jack Hawkins in the scene

that follows his pre-title
emergence from the underworld.

He's at home, cutting stacks
of £5 notes in half.

The notes end up in the hands of
Hawkins' erstwhile criminal gang,

all ex-Army men finding it difficult
to cope with life in mufti.

Just the hat
and the umbrella, please.

Oh, good morning, gentlemen.

You've all found out where
you're sitting, I take it?

Yes. So, shall we?

They include Richard Attenborough's
Lieutenant Edward Lexy,

a small-time East End crook,

and Roger Livesey's Captain Mycroft,

a priest-impersonating conman
with a line in literature

probably not approved
by the Church of England.

The book, gentlemen.
I'd like your opinions on it.

You've all read it, I take it?

I'm afraid I didn't, old darling.

Any particular reason why?
Ah, yes, the book.

I never read books from strange men.

Take a closer look at the cover.

A very brief precis
for the major's benefit.

An American thriller with a germ of
a good, almost brilliant idea,

about a group of single-minded men
who plan and execute a particularly

daring bank robbery, right?

The title of that book
couldn't be more symbolic.

It's a reminder of why the heist
genre resonates so much with us,

and why we enjoy this part
of the story in particular.

It taps into something that predates
even Robin Hood by centuries -

Jason, assembling
the world's first heist team,

the Argonauts, to steal
the fabulous Golden Fleece.

Hawkins then goes on to explain
to us, the audience,

why he's brought this particular
bunch of reprobates together.

Why should you want to lead me
to the biggest amount of loot

I've ever heard of? Because
you're one of the experts I need.

And what experts
would they be, then?

Weaver, genius with explosives.

Lexy, the radio king.

Mycroft, absolutely
first-class quartermaster.

And the other three, good, trained
soldiers, ruthless if need be.

And what's your speciality?

I synchronise the watches.

Avengers, assemble.

Back in The Asphalt Jungle,

Sam Jaffe's Doc required
a small group of helpers.

The box man, him we pay most,
maybe $25,000.

I got a guy for you.

Louis Ciavelli, best box man
west of Chicago.

Expert mechanic,
been in some very big capers.

From what I hear, he can open
a safe like the back of a watch.

Only he costs.

And we need a top-notch driver
in case of a rumble.

He should get 10,000.

And finally, sad to say,
we need a hooligan.

That will be Sterling Hayden.

Last but not least,
you need a psycho.

I'm the one that got
the mental problems in the crew.

Position taken.

It's essential to have
one troublemaker on the team.

I'm telling you right now,
If I get caught...

..I'm shooting my fucking way out.
Put that shit down.

Whether it is Michael Madsen's
loose cannon in Reservoir Dogs...

I don't really give a good fuck
what you know or don't know.

But I'm going torture you anyway.

..or Jamie Foxx's bat-shit crazy
Bats, in Baby Driver...

Baby, you know that bitch?

No.

..their function
is to turn victory

into disaster later in the film.

Until then, they're like
a ticking bomb, primed to explode,

and a great device
to ratchet up the suspense.

Ben Kingsley took the role
of unhinged loose cannon

to a new level in Sexy Beast,

in which he played the
shoutily psychotic Don Logan.

Friday, the Grosvenor,
you'll be there.

I won't. You will. I told Ted you're
doing it. Don't you show me up.

No, I won't be there.

You will! You're Mr Rowntree!

No, Don. Yes, Rowntree!

No, Don. Yes, Grosvenor!

No, Don. Friday!

I won't be there. You will! No, Don.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Once again, it's worth noting that
these so-called specialist teams

are overwhelmingly male,

a predictable trope
of the heist genre.

All of which brings us to
the strange case of Set It Off,

a mould-breaking crime picture
from the mid-'90s which centres on

an all-female African-American crew
from South-Central Los Angeles.

Everybody, get down
on the ground right now!

Put your hands up!

Move back!

Everybody, stay down.

Stay down!

Set It Off has all the makings
of a classic heist movie.

Whoo! Come on, move, move, move!

From the perpetrators who plan
to take away from the system

that's doing us all anyway,

to the inevitable action sequences
which escalate as things

start to spiral out of control.

TYRES SCREECH

Although the trailer sold
Set It Off as an action movie,

these are women dealing with
recognisable contemporary issues -

money, love, kids.

Fully-rounded characters
rooted in day-to-day reality.

Don't worry. One day
my shit is going to be tight.

Cleo, girl, you've been fixing up
this car since seventh grade!

THEY LAUGH

Do you know Lorenz
and them got away with 20 grand?

20 Gs? Damn.

See, that's what the fuck
we need to do.

Rob a bank.

That's crazy.

Please! Really, though.

The four of us could take a bank.

Look, if that crackhead Darnell
could rob a bank,

we could take a bank.

20 Gs would save my life right now.

It's also interesting to note
that Set It Off dumps the role

of the mastermind
cos it doesn't need one.

These women are working together.

They can manage on their own.

In three and a half weeks, the Met
will be hosting its annual ball...

..and we are going to rob it.

The Steven Soderbergh production
Ocean's 8 may have been notable

for its all-female core cast...

Can't we just go to this?

Do we have to steal stuff? ALL: Yes.

..but movies like Set It Off were
treading this ground decades ago.

ALL: WHOO!

We did it!

We did it!

Traditionally, the planning sequence
is where the mastermind explains

to their cohorts, and conveniently
to us, the audience,

the nature of the score.

This is the view of the bank that
you will see three weeks from today,

gentlemen. Just before
the armoured car arrives,

a commissionaire opens the
side entrance to the bank.

Maybe it's a bank, a casino,
a jewel vault, an art collection.

Arthur and Lorna, park the three
fast cars here in case anything

goes wrong and we've got to
make a quick getaway, right?

Correct. Now, it's 12:10.

The bullion van will be
entering the piazza

and will be forced
slowly towards the centre.

Traditionally, these sequences
have a seductive allure,

the thrill of seeing
a finely-tuned job come together

with great creative wit
and ingenuity.

Now, once we get down the shaft,
though, then it's a piece of cake.

Just two more guards with Uzis,

and the most elaborate vault door
ever conceived by man.

The money you see being
handled so calmly

often amounts to over £1 million.

Like storyboarding a movie itself,

this sequence tells us what things
are going to look like if all goes

according to plan
which, inevitably, it won't.

We all know what to do at the point
of attack because

we've gone over this shit enough.

Anybody gets caught...

..you shut the fuck up.

The planning scene is such an
essential staple that you'll find it

in everything, from perhaps the
most modest heist film ever made,

to the most ambitious.

Get the van fixed up, right?

Christopher Nolan's psychological
heist movie Inception

is one of the biggest blockbusters
of the 21st century.

Leonardo DiCaprio leads a team
of dream bandits who plot to

break into Cillian Murphy's mind,

in order to change the future
of a business empire.

You know, I couldn't help but notice
but you wouldn't happen to be

related to
THE Maurice Fisher, would you?

Yes, he, um...

..he was my father.

It's a multi-layered plot
stunningly complemented by

Oscar-winning cinematography
and cutting-edge visual effects.

But when Leo actually
has to explain the score,

forget all those
eye-popping digital visuals,

you can't beat a good-old
flip chart in a warehouse.

"Split up my father's empire."

Now, this is obviously an
idea that Robert himself

would choose to reject,

which is why we need to plant it
deep in his subconscious.

The subconscious is motivated
by emotion, right, not reason?

We need to find... It's shot like
a classic heist planning sequence.

Nolan places his camera
at eye level as if we're sitting

in the room ourselves.

It couldn't be simpler
or more effective.

His father is stressed,
to say the least.

Can we run with that? These planning
sequences don't just help us

understand the score.

More than any other scene
in a heist movie,

they make us feel like
we're part of the gang,

the unseen extra member of the team.

Catharsis.

Now, look at THIS scene
from Bill Forsyth's 1979 gem

That Sinking Feeling, a film which,
at the time of its release,

was the cheapest ever
to play in UK cinemas.

What's this area famous for?

What's it well-known for?

Drunks.

Muggers.

Multiple social deprivation.

Sinks! Stainless steel sinks!

Hundreds of them up
at Martin's warehouse.

Sinks worth a fortune!

This scene isn't so much
a planning sequence

as a lack-of-planning sequence,

brilliantly satirising scenes
from slicker movies.

The sinks come at 60 quid apiece.

An hour in there, we could shift
80, maybe 90 of them into a van.

60 times 90...

Hey, that's over 100 quid!

Written with the help of
a Glasgow theatre group,

the whole budget for
That Sinking Feeling

was around £5,000.

It was made in 1979,
31 years before Inception.

So, not adjusting for inflation,
it was around $159,990,000 cheaper,

give or take a few cents.

Yet, Forsyth's film has become
an enduring favourite because

it plays into popular
underdog prejudices.

We sympathise with our crew
against their fat-cat targets.

Put it back.

Gie's a break, Ronnie. It's
my mother's birthday next week.

Look, you know the rules.

These things are too easily traced.
Now, put it back.

Because the heist movie has been
refining the planning sequence

for decades, it's become incredibly
adept at conveying enormous amounts

of complex information
in a very short time.

Now, everyone pretty much agrees
that the most cunning criminals

on earth are bankers
and stock traders.

So it's no surprise that stories
of their scams have been told using

the conventions of the heist
in films like Martin Scorsese's

Wolf Of Wall Street, in which
Leonardo DiCaprio gets to hatch

yet more mischief
with a whiteboard in a warehouse,

and Adam McKay's The Big Short.

All right. You think we just
warehouse it on the books?

No. We just repackage it

with a bunch of other shit
that didn't sell,

and put it into a CDO.

A CDO? Yes, a CDO.

What is that?

This is where we take a bunch of Bs,

BBs and BBBS that haven't sold,
and we put them in a pile.

In both of these movies,

characters take the explanatory
conventions of the planning sequence

to their natural conclusion,

with characters breaking
the fourth wall

and talking directly
to the audience.

An IPO is
an initial public offering,

it's the first time a stock
is offered for sale

to the general population.

Now, as the firm taking
the company public,

we set the initial sales price,

then sold those shares
right back to our friends.

And that direct address once again
makes us feel in on the deal,

the privileged confidantes
of the mastermind.

I know you're not following
what I'm saying anyway, right?

That's OK, that doesn't matter.

The real question is this.

Was all this legal?

Absolutely fucking not.

Both movies utilise heist techniques
like assembling the team

and the planning sequence,
to concisely illustrate

the otherwise impenetrable schemes
of bankers.

The smartest of the bunch
was Nicky Koskoff.

He actually went to law school.

I called him Rugrat because of
his piece-of-shit hairpiece.

But here, our nominal heroes, like
Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort

and Ryan Gosling's Jared Vennett,
are actually unsympathetic bad guys

who show absolutely
no moral virtues whatsoever.

My killers, who will not
take no for an answer!

My fucking warriors,
who will not hang up the phone

until their client either buys

or fucking dies!

ALL: Yes!

Yeah!

Bizarrely, in order to tell
the story of the shady trading

that led to our worst
stock market crashes,

the conventions of the heist movie
had to become so twisted

that our protagonists
were real bad guys,

and some of them
more or less get away with it.

Many heist movies don't actually
personalise the law

in the form of a specific cop.

Instead, they follow the lead
of The Asphalt Jungle,

and use the law
as an ominous presence,

glimpsed through curtains while
the host progresses and gradually

moving closer as time ticks away.

SIRENS WAIL

But as we've seen already,

this is a genre that
allows film-makers

to play with our sympathies,
and our sense of right and wrong.

And one way to do that is to
boost up the role of the cop.

The energetic heist scenes in
Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break,

for instance, play second fiddle
to a narrative exploring the notion

that cops and robbers
may not be so different after all.

Don't look at me!

You're blowing it, man!
You're breaking your own rules!

You're pulling too much time!

Who are we really rooting for?

Keanu Reeves's FBI agent
or Patrick Swayze's robber surfer?

Even Keanu can't decide.

Instead, by the end of the movie,

Keanu has become so infatuated
with his prey that he simply

can't take him down.
They are cut from the same cloth.

Vaya con Dios.

This convention is so well worn
that writer Charlie Kaufman

took pot-shots at it in
Spike Jonze's self reflective

anti-thriller Adaptation.

OK, but here's the twist.

We find out that
the killer really suffers

from multiple
personality disorder, right?

See, he's actually really
the cop AND the girl.

All of them are him.

Isn't that fucked up?

The only idea more overused
than serial killers

is multiple personality.

On top of that,

you explore the notion that cop
and criminal are really two aspects

of the same person.

See every cop movie ever made
for other examples of this!

The risk of slipping into cliche
didn't deter director Michael Mann

when he adapted his made-for-TV
movie LA Takedown,

based on the real-life story

of an ex-Alcatraz inmate
and his police pursuer,

into the 1995
crime movie classic Heat.

What do you say
I buy you a cup of coffee?

A heist movie that minutely
explores the boundaries between

the good guys and the bad guys,

and ultimately teaches us
that in this world,

everything is just shades of grey.

I am never going back.

Then don't take down scores.

I do what I do best.

I take scores. You do what you do
best, try to stop guys like me.

The most celebrated scene
from Heat is this sequence

in which Al Pacino's cop
and Robert De Niro's crook

meet in a coffee shop
on the eve of their coming showdown.

Mann sets the scene up as a mirror
image in which these two characters

become reflections of each other.

I don't know
how to do anything else.

Neither do I.

I don't much want to, either.

Neither do I.

The shots are simple
but carefully coded.

It's a colour film, but look
at the use of darkness and shadow.

We can see the legacy of
German Expressionism filtered here

through the prism of film noir.

You know, we're sitting here...

..you and I,
like a couple of regular fellows.

You do what you do.

I do what I've got to do.

And now that we've been
face-to-face...

The performances
are carefully balanced

in terms of script and screen time.

Everything about this scene

is telling us that these men
are two sides of the same coin,

and encouraging us to
see ourselves in both of them.

If it's between you and
some poor bastard whose wife

you're going to turn into a widow...

..brother, you are going down.

The casting of Pacino and De Niro

gestures toward
the Godfather trilogy,

perhaps the most famous
American crime series of all time.

Within this single scene,

we can see the lineage
of the crime thriller,

from Europe to America,

from black and white to colour,
from past to present,

left-hand and right-hand,
intertwined.

But some of the best movies of
recent years to play with

the cop-criminal relationship

have come from beyond
European and American cinema.

Hong Kong has a particularly strong
tradition of undercover cop stories

which explore this territory.

In Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's
Infernal Affairs,

the cops don't just
infiltrate the criminals,

the criminals also
infiltrate the cops.

The result was remade by
Martin Scorsese as The Departed,

the movie which finally
landed him overdue Oscars

for Best Director and Best Picture.

Yeah?

You called this number
on a dead guy's phone.

Who are you?

So it is you?

Thank God you're all right.

We were very worried.

Who are you?

This is Sergeant Sullivan.

I'm taking over Queenan's unit.

There are clear parallels, too,

between Hong Kong director
Ringo Lam's 1987 City On Fire

and Quentin Tarantino's
Reservoir Dogs,

made five years later.

Reservoir Dogs is a heist movie
with a difference.

The difference being that we never
actually see the job itself,

only its build-up
and its bloody aftermath.

It's a budget-saving techniques

seen before in films like
the 1950 noir Gun Crazy,

but it's still a bold move,

because at the heart of most
heist movies is the heist.

Watch this. It's the start of
the heist sequence from Rififi,

a movie made in Paris

just five years
after The Asphalt Jungle.

The director, Jules Dassin, also
plays a specialist safe-cracker,

employed by mastermind Tony

to help mount an audacious
raid on a jeweller's shop.

This heist isn't a hold-up,

but a carefully staged break-in
from the upstairs apartment.

Described by American critic
Roger Ebert as,

"The father of all later
movies in which thieves

"carry out complicated robberies,"

Rififi boasts a near wordless
28-minute break-in sequence,

the influence of which
is still being felt today.

There's no music to tell the story,

just the sound
of the thieves at work.

The careful pace makes us feel like

we're watching
the burglary unfold in real-time.

In a particularly brilliant touch,

Dassin's character, Cesar,

chooses ballet pumps
as his footwear,

baffling the sounds of his feet,

allowing him to dance
through the heist in silence.

Editor Roger Dwyre heightens the
tension and sense of silence

by peppering the scene with
perfectly placed spot sounds.

CLUNKING

NOTE FROM PIANO KEY

A piece of music was composed
for the sequence by Georges Auric,

but, after seeing the cut...

..Auric himself agreed
that it should run silent.

The effect is that we pay attention
to every detail, every sound.

It's as if we're
in the room ourselves.

Compare that scene from Rififi,
which Dassin made in 1955,

with this scene from Brian De
Palma's 1996 Hollywood blockbuster

Mission: Impossible.

CLUNK

QUIET RATTLE

And Rififi was also parodied,
along with numerous other titles,

in Nick Park's wonderful short
The Wrong Trousers.

Managing to be hilarious
AND suspenseful,

the Wrong Trousers is full of
the ingredients we've come to enjoy,

like photoelectric
and hair trigger alarms.

And, again, not a word is spoken.

QUIET WHIRRING

Watch the beads of sweat as the
Penguin nearly drops the diamond.

TING!

The Wrong Trousers predates
Mission: Impossible by three years.

So Tom Cruise is playing
an incredibly close version

of Nick Park's Penguin, as he
negotiates alarms so sensitive

that they can be triggered
by a single drop of sweat.

But Nick Park
took his lead from Dassin.

SUPPRESSED COUGH

That photoelectric alarm system

which almost proved the undoing
of The Wrong Trousers

has been dodged by some of the
most supple actors in the business.

75 seconds.

In fact, it's turned into
one of those show-stopping scenes

we expect from a certain kind
of hi-tech heist movie,

as the makers of Entrapment
knew very well.

Here, lasers form
Catherine Zeta-Jones'

and Sean Connery's major obstacle.

Freeze. You're blocking the beam.
I can't see it.

I've got it covered.

Clever girl.

Meanwhile, back in London in 1960,

Jack Hawkins' gang brought a less
delicate approach to their heist.

WOMAN SCREAMS

Do as you're told
and no-one will get hurt.

This armed raid features
many visual and physical tropes

that have been echoed or refined
in subsequent movies.

Heads down, eyes down.

Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen,

may I have your attention, please.

All right.

OK. Turn around.

All of y'all, turn the fuck around.
Don't move.

We want to hurt no-one.

We're here for the bank's money,
not your money.

Your money is insured
by the federal government,

you're not going to lose a dime.

Remember how we were made to pay
all that close attention back

in the planning sequence?
Well, here's where it pays off.

We can enjoy the fast-moving action

without getting hopelessly confused
about what's going on.

Heist movies often deploy one of
the oldest techniques in cinema,

known as parallel editing.

Here, the action cuts
between simultaneous events

at two or more different
locations -

for instance, a guard or
policeman outside the bank,

and the criminals inside.

RADIO: Extreme caution.
Suspects armed and dangerous.

Can you believe this? God dammit!
Shit!

Don't move! Don't move!

It's a simple but effective way of
creating and sustaining suspense,

immersing the viewer in the risks
and dangers of the heist.

That fucking drawer too.

Don't move.
SHE SHOUTS

You, down. You, don't move.

Parallel editing was pioneered
by Edwin S Porter

in The Great Train Robbery,

the landmark 1903 film,
which also gave us location shooting

and composite editing.

Porter showed two
simultaneous actions

happening in different places

to create dramatic tension.

It's been a favourite method of
heist movie directors ever since.

More than 100 years after
Porter's ground-breaking classic,

Christopher Nolan pushed the
boundaries of parallel editing...

..in his 21st century
heist movie Inception.

Here, Nolan and his editor Lee Smith

juggled multiple simultaneous
actions happening

in dreamscapes at
different levels of consciousness...

..to build the extraordinary
drawn out climactic sequence

of the picture.

We saw earlier on how heist movies
often feature planning sequences

that show how things
should go down -

but, invariably,
something goes wrong.

Sometimes random fate lends a hand

in the shape of
youngsters innocently

collecting licence plate numbers
in The League Of Gentlemen,

or a suitcase full of loot
breaking open in The Killing.

But more commonly it's the fault
of the weakest link in the gang.

The psycho, or the snitch,

or the person who's just
too human to see it through.

What did you do, Baby?

What the fuck did you do?

I moved. You moved.
I'll fucking kill you.

And then there are the films
in which the sheer level

of criminal ineptitude
is itself the point of the movie.

Drop your weapon.

Think of Robert Pattinson's
desperately misguided robber Connie,

in the recent indie hit Good Time,

directed by the talented
Safdie brothers.

Connie recruits his brother,
who has learning disabilities,

as his accomplice
in a half-baked heist...

It's just you and me,
I'm your friend.

..to show him a good time.

But Connie's making it up
as he goes along.

In a heist movie,
that's a cardinal sin.

In some ways, Connie is
the cinematic descendant

of Al Pacino's Sonny,

from Sidney Lumet's '70s classic
Dog Day Afternoon.

Right, freeze.

Nobody move. Get over there.

OK.

Inspired by the real-life story

of haphazard bank robber
John Wojtowicz,

Dog Day Afternoon paints Pacino's
character as a sympathetic putz,

who's also motivated by love.

He wants to fund his partner's
gender reassignment.

You want that fucking
operation, right?

You giving me that shit,
everybody's giving me shit.

Everybody needs money,
you know what I mean?

So, you needed money,
I got you money, that's it.

In both Dog Day Afternoon
and Good Time,

the heists happen early in the film
and both go spectacularly wrong.

What the fuck did you do?

SCREAMING, CAR HORNS

Connie spends the rest of the movie

digging himself
into an ever deeper hole...

..while in Dog Day Afternoon,

Pacino's desperate Sonny
becomes increasingly focused

on how he's
going to get away with it.

When things go wrong
in a crime movie,

there's usually only one thing
for it - run

or, more often, drive.

The getaway has been a staple of
the crime movie since its inception,

mutating into the car chase,

which has become one of
cinema's favourite set pieces.

From The Italian Job in 1969

to The Driver in 1978,

there was a spate of crime and heist
movies featuring ever more elaborate

and destructive car chases.

And in the space of
less than a decade,

you see a big evolution
in how they were filmed.

Look at this famous sequence from
The Italian Job - bright colours,

carefully framed shots covering
highly choreographed action.

It's a delight to watch but you
never feel any real sense of danger.

But just two years later,

crime thriller The French Connection

really put the audience
in the driver's seat.

Director William Friedkin
was charged by his producer,

Phil D'Antoni,

to stage a chase that would
top previous genre classics.

or in the true-life book
upon which the film was based.

So one afternoon,

Friedkin and D'Antoni decided to
take a walk and see what happened.

And as they walked, they saw
the trains going by overhead,

on the elevated railway line.

And the idea struck them,

"Why don't we have a car chase in
which the car chases the train?"

The French Connection chase became
something of a cinematic milestone.

One of the reasons
it's so convincing

is that these streets are crowded
and filled with people,

pedestrians, other drivers,

all of whom get in the way of
Popeye Doyle's speeding vehicle.

The chase scene has
a terrific sense of verisimilitude.

It looks real, and some of it was.

Director Friedkin challenged
stunt driver Bill Hickman to

"really show me something" -

a challenge Hickman met by
speeding through ten blocks,

running red lights, dodging cars

and actually creasing
a city bus in the process.

In another famous sequence,

a car pulled out in front
of Popeye Doyle's vehicle,

causing a real-life collision,

captured on film
and worked into the narrative.

The French Connection was one of
many movies to which director

Edgar Wright looked for inspiration
when making Baby Driver,

his love letter to films
like The Driver, The Getaway,

Freebie And The Bean and William
Friedkin's To Live And Die In LA.

But conventions are there
to be twisted and broken,

and Wright decided to do something
different with Baby Driver,

to make a car-chase thriller
disguised a as musical -

The French Connection
meets An American In Paris.

The chases in Baby Driver
feel both dangerous and stylish.

The movie is a masterclass
in film editing.

Wright and his editors
Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos

bring a physicality and rhythmically
musical joy to the proceedings.

Although Baby Driver
is a heist movie,

it has its roots in a pop video

which Wright made in 2003
for Mint Royal's Blue Song,

in which Noel Fielding danced in
the seat of a parked getaway car

while his buddies pull a job.

# Step some more, I said

# Pick me up

# Thinkin' I got a lot

# Groovy, I am... #

MIMES: Thank you very much, ladies
and gentlemen, right now I got...

Indeed, Baby Driver opens

with an explicit nod to
its small screen dry run,

with Ansel Elgort lip-syncing

to Bell Bottoms by
the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion...

# Bell bottoms

ALARM BLARES
# Bell bottoms... #

..while his cohorts rob a bank.

Later, he halts a job
until he's correctly cued up

the frantic bass riff opening
of The Damned's Neat Neat Neat.

BASS GUITAR
What the fuck?

OK, go.

Look at way these scenes are cut
to the beat and themes of the songs.

Although the narrative of the film
is one of criminals on the run,

everything about the look,

and, more importantly,
the editing of Baby Driver

tells you that you're watching
a song and dance routine.

No wonder Baby dances his way
through the opening credits.

MUSIC: Harlem Shuffle
by Bob and Earl

More in manner of Gene Kelly
than Gene Hackman.

Even in more traditional
heist movies,

the characters are often allowed
a brief moment to dance,

or at least to celebrate,

when it looks like
they've pulled off the job.

THEY SING

After the extreme tension
of the heist,

it's a moment of transcendent joy.

The underdogs
have beaten the system.

But in drama, every high point
has a corresponding low.

It's like a law of physics,
which means if we are

only three-quarters of
the way through the film

and the characters are already
uncorking the champagne,

well, the bubble is about to burst.

There's a classic example of this
unravelling in Rififi.

A textbook error by Cesar,

who pockets a diamond ring
for his lover,

provides the crack in the plan

through which everything
starts to fall.

MAN SHOUTS

SHE SCREAMS

Gradually, everyone turns
on each other.

This falling apart is typical
of the heist genre.

Rien recu la.

Francois Truffaut said in his review
of the movie that Rififi is

structured like a classical tragedy.

Act one, preparation for a hold-up.

Act two, consummation
of the hold-up.

Act three,
punishment, vengeance, death.

You can see that tragic pattern
playing out time and time again

in heist movies, whatever the
characters and their targets

or motives may be,

whether they're robbing jewellers
or banks.

And then there's the fascinating
case of Kelly Reichardt's film

Night Moves, an existential thriller

in which three supposedly
well-intentioned

but mismatched eco-warriors conspire
to blow up a hydroelectric dam.

Which way you going back?
26, across the mountain.

It's out the way but there's more
traffic, we can blend in.

When we split up,
we shouldn't talk on the phone.

Yeah, no way. No contact.

No contact.

The first half of the film is
a definitely executed blend

of psychological intrigue
and growing heist movie tension.

The raid itself achieves
nail-biting levels of suspense.

The bomb is planted in silence,

with Reichardt clearly taking
inspiration from Rififi.

But after the heist,
in which someone dies,

everything falls apart.

The bombers turn on each other...

..the purpose
of the mission is lost,

and the wide-eyed idealism
of the first act

is replaced by the duplicity,
distrust and disintegration

of the third act.

It's a bleak, yet brilliant film

that reminds us of a key theme
of so many heist movies -

that pulling off the job
is one thing,

but keeping it together
afterwards is another matter.

Not every heist movie
has to end grimly.

But as we've seen, this is a genre
shot through with moral ambiguity,

in which we're encouraged
to identify with thieves

and even killers.

These aren't the kind of characters

who tend to get conventional
happy endings,

and two heist movies in particular
capture that ambiguity

with their final images.

Take the end of The Italian Job.

It's literally a cliff-hanger,

perfectly symbolising

the tricky moral balancing act

we've had to play
while watching the film.

Hang on a minute, lads.

I've got a great idea.

Er...

Er...

Then look at the conclusion
of Inception,

a heist movie made 42 years later,
also featuring Michael Caine.

The final shot leaves us with
a delicately balanced spinning top,

wondering if our hero
really did get away with it

or if this is all a tragic dream.

If we've learned anything
from the story of the heist,

it's that even if the audiences
desperately want our heroes

to get away with it,
either the censors

or our own in-built
sense of morality

will insist that, in the end,
crime doesn't pay.

All present and correct, sir.

At ease, gentlemen.

Unless you happen to be a banker.

So I was right.

I took a rash of shit
for two years but...

..I was right.
And everyone was wrong.

And, yeah,
I got a bonus cheque for it.

Sue me.

You know?

Earlier in this programme, we saw
the beginning of Dead Presidents,

with the young antiheroes
preparing to pull a deadly heist.

Let's finish
with the end of that film,

with Larenz Tate's Anthony, who has
served and suffered in Vietnam,

facing so-called justice
and refusing to go quietly.

Anthony Curtis, for your
participation in this crime,

a crime that took the lives
of several innocent people,

I do hereby sentence you to
the custody of the Attorney General

of the United States
for a period of 15 years to life.

Oh, my God.

These proceedings are concluded.
This court is adjourned.

Life? What's he mean, life?

For all the shit I did for
this motherfucking country?

What the fuck
he talking about, life?

Man, fuck you, fuck you!

Fuck this shit. All the shit I did
for this motherfucking country.

Remove the prisoner from the court.

You hear me? Fuck you. Fuck you. I
didn't do any of this shit for me.

SEVERAL PEOPLE SHOUTING

Next time, how to make
a classic coming of age movie,

from Rebel Without A Cause

to Ladybird.