Word: heists
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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From Big Deal on Madonna Street to How to Steal a Million, film makers have been trying to perfect the genre known in the trade as "caper comedies," films which center around a masterminded robbery. Like most criminals, however, the creators expend all their energies on the heist and not nearly enough building their characters...
With Zero Mostel, and a wildly improbable storyline, The Great Bank Robbery seems all set to snipe away at an inviting target-the standard western heist. Unfortunately, amid leathery gags and uninspired parody, the guns jam early and often...
...that time, four men break into the Financiera Monty, a Montevideo finance company that deals in currency exchange and real estate. Although the men make off with thousands of dollars and six account books, the company does not report the incident to the police. A few days after the heist, Montevideo papers and radio stations receive mimeographed messages from the thieves asking why the robbery was not reported and charging that the Financiera Monty was involved in illegal activities. The stolen books are later found on the doorstep of a court official. The ensuing government investigation eventually results...
...BESET by a crop of western about extremely competent people. In Sam Whiskey, a dreary little film which proceeds shakily on the mistaken assumption that the audience is interested in what's going on, the title character engineers and executes a gold heist--crushing his adversaries and winding up in a clinch with Angie Dickinson. Along the way, he meets with no serious obstacles. In Support Your Local Sheriff, a food picture by Burt Kennedy, James Garner cleans up the town and wins the girl with computer-like dispatch, supremely faster, smarter, and better looking then anyone--and well aware...
Caper flicks, as the trade calls them invariably involve some lovable folk; who pull off an enormous and improbable heist, only to be foiled in the last reel by a freakish turn of fate. Disaster can come in many forms: a runaway poodle (The Killing), a cremated coffin (Ocean's 11), or a kid with a photographic memory (The League of Gentlemen). At their best, caper movies can be wry little existential parables; at their worst, they are merely two hours of closeups on nervous thieves and unyielding safe dials...