I enjoy a good caper. Vodka and cranberry juice? I’m in. And they pair really well with heist films. Recently, I’ve watched a lot of them, but the Ocean’s trilogy and Jean-Pierre Melville are most prominent in my thoughts. According to Roger Ebert, Bob Le Flambeur is the film that put heist films in their own genre. Although I was neutral on the film overall, I do think that it’s full of interesting moments. In a way, we get the scenes of amassing a crew like in Ocean’s or even Seven Samurai. And we also learn about the plan before it happens. Many of these elements work well, but plenty of them have become cliche or some would just call them classic genre conventions.
Telling the plan before it happens is one such convention. Although it doesn’t happen in every movie, it does happen in most. I think this relates to the preference between suspense and surprise. If we know the plan beforehand, then we have knowledge and knowledge equals suspense and tension if we can see a new obstacle getting in the way of that plan. But the lack of knowledge can lead to a shock when we get to see what happens. Often, heist films involve some unforeseen complication during the heist causing our heroes to improvise which is only apparent when we already know the plan. The point being: for a tense heist you have to know something ahead of time. And it doesn’t just have to be the actual plan, it could just be the goal which could be enough for the audience to understand some of the twists and turns that the plot takes.
I absolutely loved Le Cercle Rouge. I will rather sheepishly admit that I originally thought the movie was about one character and the film was jumping around in time, so it took me a bit to realize that there were two main characters all along. Moving along, there are so many moments of pure cinema in this film. The actors have that perfect Melville coolness and they evoke so much with just a glance (which makes me wonder if Refn is a fan of Melville given the cool and quiet protagonists of Drive, Only God Forgives, and Valhalla Rising). The actual heist is amazing and tense and I think it could only exist in the film medium. A video game could come close, but often the tension of traditional games are lost if the fail state is reached; whereas, you can gain more tension in a film if the protagonists fail.
But the thing I enjoy most about heist films is when the thieves have a code. Cinema about people who have a job and do it well appeals to me. The ability to carry out a process and take it to its completion just makes for a good film. Look at There Will Be Blood, Upstream Color, Micheal Clayton (which would be much better if we had seen Clooney doing his job more), and heist films which are workplace dramas in a way (maybe that’s a little farfetched but this is my blog and we play by my rules here). AS Brad Pitt says in Moneyball (another great movie about a person who can do their job well) “This is a process. It’s a process, it’s a process. Okay?” So thieves who know what they’re doing and we can trust them to do it instead of breaking into chaos absolutely enthralls me. The Ocean’s crew have “shaken the hand of Sinatra” and that’s enough for them to trust one another. Even a film like Heat involves a code. One of the greatest moments in all of cinema is DeNiro walking away when he feels the heat coming at the end. I like people who stick to their codes. Perhaps this is another reason why I love Le Cercle Rouge so much. Almost wordlessly, we learn the codes of the characters. Both of the men we meet are criminals but they trust each other with their lives. Alain Delon even puts his life in danger, trusting that the stranger hiding in his trunk will know how to dispatch the antagonists. Heist films are the best for this, but people who live by a code pop up in other genres. You just don’t get many Alain Delons in horror films though.
And now time for everyone’s favorite: The Weekend Update! I emailed a company with some footage I could use in my thesis but then they asked for quite a bit of money, none of which I have. But they were super helpful and steered me in the direction of some other footage I might be able to get. Here’s their website if anyone’s interested. Besides that, I’ll be on break for the next two weeks so I’m going to try to finish up my film and continue writing The Maillard Reaction. Thanks for reading what is basically me gushing about heist films.
Keep it sleazy (and watch The Good Place),
Austin
A Bigger Boat 