Celebrate the Great American Criminal by Streaming these 5 Bank Robberies
Crime clearly does pay. In Oscars. The Watchlist’s series of best picture playlists begins with the excellent and overlooked Hell or High Water.
America loves a criminal. We have a special relationship with rouges, and there’s something especially cathartic about watching them run amok on screen. The noble thief is an archetype as old as any, but he finds a special home in the history of chaos and debauchery in America. This best picture nominee presents that old story in a simple and masterful way.
It’s a story without any fat on it. A pair of charming criminals enact a spree of bank robberies in Texas as a ranger on the verge of retirement chases their tales. Like most romantic criminals, these brothers represent a sort of freedom in the face of disenfranchisement — an anarchic detachment from a society that has forgotten them. They feel so alienated that society itself becomes the ‘other’ and the qualms that would stop most people from grabbing a pistol and holding up their local bank dissapear. But in order to stay fun, a movie like Hell or High water has to perform a bit of ethical gymnastics — and it does so expertly. We want a criminal who is ruthless but not devoid of compassion. It’s contradictory, but that’s how we can allow ourselves to relate to him. We prefer him not to WANT to kill, but be willing to do so if he must. We prefer him to recite the classic line that countless movie bank robbers have in the past: “We’re not robbing you, we’re robbing the bank.” There’s a reason we don’t often see movies glorifying thugs who mug old ladies. Thugs who rob faceless financial institutions however? That’s fine. Fuck banks. The movie presents a current American West that’s frighteningly similar to the old one, comprised of dying towns and thread-line moral fiber, where a posse of rifle-toting cowboys in pick-up trucks might chase you out of town. But it doesn't let the brother’s fully escape judgement. We do still prefer our criminals to be criminals, because, while we may want the thrill of being able to ride with them for a day, when that day is over we’d prefer to go home.
Now your Watchlist:
1. Hell or High Water — Youtube/GooglePlay/itunes/VOD
2. Inside Man — Crackle
Denzel as the cop, Clive Owen as the criminal mastermind, Spike Lee as the Director. That should be about all you need to know. Like any Spike Lee Joint, Inside Man is as much about New York as anything else, so it’s more sprawling than most bank robbery stories. It’s thrill comes from the unraveling mystery of the heist, and a criminal who is always one step ahead, it’s unyielding charm comes from the films love of it’s many ancillary characters.
3. Heat — Youtube/GooglePlay/itunes/VOD
This movie is a modern classic, and boasts performances by Al Pacino and Robert Deniro at the very top of their games. This is also possibly the most quoted Bank Robbery ever. If you haven’t seen it yet, now is as good a time as any.
4. Dog Day Afternoon — Cinemax/Amazon/GooglePlay/VOD
Hey look who it is! Pacino again! Remember when I said Pacino was at the top of his game in Heat? I may have been wrong. THIS might be the top of his game. 20 years earlier. He was at the top for a while. Here Pacino isn’t the cop, but the criminal, and not a good one at that. Unlike most of it’s peers, this movie is about a bank heist that does not go well. At all.
5. The Lookout — Youtube/GooglePlay/itunes/VOD
I do love me some JGL. This one is a mix between the heist movie and the bank robbery, two often overlapping sub-genres. (we’ll go into more detail at a later date) In the lookout, Joseph Gordon Levitt plays a guy who peaked in high school — mostly because of a terrible accident — who is drawn into a plot to rob the bank he works at. It incorporates elements from heists, noir, all sorts of crime movies, but the movie’s greatest strength is Levitt’s character.
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