Heist Movies

Heist movies can be pretty popular, which is a little alarming considering most people’s views on robbery. They usually come in one of two varieties. One of them has the protagonists as the thieves, trying to steal something from a very bad person or corporation. The other type has the thieves as the bad guys, with the protagonists trying to stop them. It usually depends on if the protagonist is a law enforcement officer of some sort, or a good-natured person who can’t catch a break, and thus most resort to breaking the law (but not the bad laws, and only steals insured items, so those evil insurance companies have to pay).

My problem with most heist movies is that the people don’t think big enough. Takers is a movie coming out soon. It has a team of six people trying for one last big score - $30 million. Now, that’s nothing to sneeze at, working out to roughly $5 million per person. It’s probably enough to live comfortably for the rest of one’s life. But really, any expensive purchase will eat into that. A mansion anywhere popular (New York, LA, Miami) will wipe it out completely.

This is really a problem in TV shows, but I guess it’s because people can’t be stealing $50 million every week. That would get old, and pretty unrealistic. In reality, there aren’t too many places where that much money is collected in one place. I’m betting even most jewellery is worth less than $10 million, so stealing a diamond may not be worth it (the other problem with stealing rocks is that people will be on the lookout for it. Once stolen, the thief either has to cut it, diminishing its value significantly, or hang onto it until the authorities have reduced their interest).

In the pilot of White Collar, there wasn’t a theft, but multiple forgeries worth $150 million. But from there, it’s gone to less expensive crimes, usually between $100,000 and $10 million. In Burn Notice, they mostly deal with even smaller stuff, but that’s because it might be cars or small-time thefts.

I like movies where they think big. Die Hard has a tradition of this. The first one had the villains stealing $680 million (worth about $1.2 billion today). The second one was about releasing a drug kingpin, so less about money than the others. The third one had Jeremy Irons stealing $140 billion worth of gold ($140 billion in 1995 works out to about $195 billion today. If he’d been smart – and not gotten himself killed – he would have kept it in gold, where it’d be worth $345 billion today). In the fourth film, the villains (as far as I can tell) planned to steal the entire wealth of everyone in the US. I have no idea how much that amounts to, but I’m guessing many billions of dollars.

On the other side of the coin, we have the Oceans movies, where the protagonists are trying to steal money. The first one (the remake) had them stealing about $160 million, with a 12 person team, working out to around $13 million and change each. The second one I’ll a pass because it was more about the competition and not the money. The third one had them trying to bankrupt a new casino by having everyone win on opening night (so they didn’t make out with much from that) but also stealing $250 million in diamond necklaces – but I’ve already explained the problem with that.

Sometimes a lot of money isn’t stolen for a reason. In Payback, Mel Gibson is trying to steal $70,000. It’s more about the principle than the actual money. He was stiffed, and nobody stiffs him. He has to correct many people who think he wants more. In Bottle Rocket, one of the brothers doesn’t really want to rob anything, and the other is too small-minded to think of anything larger.

Movies about cons (con games, not convicts) generally have lesser amounts of money, for reasons not adequately explained except in Matchstick Men (where con men are just like you and I, scratching out a living, except that they do it illegally, and some of us actually enjoy our jobs)

And in Heat, they only steal $12 million. Why that’s so small for such a lauded movie I’ll never understand. Maybe I should just be thankful that criminals don’t big ideas.