How to rob a bank (accord­ing to the movies)

Has there ever been a whol­ly suc­cess­ful on-screen bank rob­bery? Sure, plen­ty of cin­e­mat­ic crooks have actu­al­ly made it out of the door with the loot, but that’s often where the prob­lems start: cops, road­blocks, dou­ble-cross­ings and, in the case of Keanu Reeves/​James Caan heist caper Henry’s Crime, a provin­cial stage pro­duc­tion of Chekhov’s ​‘The Cher­ry Orchard’ – all have to be nego­ti­at­ed before you can kick back on the beach and swill piña coladas. No sin­gle movie rob­bery has ever gone entire­ly accord­ing to plan, but by tak­ing lessons from a stack of them, could it be pos­si­ble to plot and car­ry out the per­fect score and – more impor­tant­ly – get away clean?

Okay, so there may be a few cas­es of career crims exe­cut­ing the per­fect score, but feel we can dis­qual­i­fy them all. Heath Ledger’s Jok­er pulls off some ele­gant­ly nut­ty lar­ce­ny in the open­ing scene of The Dark Knight, but then he burns all the swag. The fear­some trio of Bill Mur­ray, Gina Davis and Randy ​“Star Whack­ers” Quaid get the bet­ter of the NYPD in Quick Change, but the entire plot revolves around Davis hav­ing mil­lions of dol­lars stuffed down her bra, so this one’s a lit­tle fan­ci­ful. And Clive Owen may have got the job done in Inside Man, but it involved sit­ting in his own wee for a week, which isn’t everyone’s idea of high crime.

This is one area where it’s real­ly easy to over think things. Don’t get bogged down in the nit­ty grit­ty details – in and out always works best. You can sweet-talk it, Clooney in Out of Sight-style, but you might be bet­ter off fol­low­ing the lead of Berlin one-tak­er Vic­to­ria; wave a gun in a teller’s face and leg it. Kein muss, kein fuss.

Do your research. The Cole-Younger gang come unstuck in Philip Kaufman’s man­nered, under­rat­ed, gram­mat­i­cal­ly erro­neous west­ern, The Great North­field Min­neso­ta Raid, when they fail to put the hard yards in before their heist and arrive to find that the locals dis­trust the banks for fear of hav­ing their dough pinched by thiev­ing cow­boys. Thus, the gang are reduced to hang­ing out on street cor­ners being flam­boy­ant­ly ​‘over­heard’ boast­ing about how much geld they and their friends have entrust­ed to this most secure of insti­tu­tions, in the hope the cred­u­lous towns­folk will fol­low suit and there’ll be some mon­ey in the bank when they do final­ly rob it.

Which brings us to anoth­er impor­tant point: keep it imper­son­al. Don’t do what Nico­las Cage and his idiot broth­ers Jon Lovitz and Dana Car­vey do in Trapped in Par­adise by rob­bing a small­town bank and then spend­ing a cosy Christ­mas with the unsus­pect­ing bank man­ag­er. A guilty con­science is like rust on the soul: impos­si­ble to scrub away. Keep it civ­il, but busi­nesslike. And don’t hang about. War­ren Oates in Dillinger or John­ny Depp in Pub­lic Ene­mies are your role mod­els here – polite, suave, fast. And on to the next.

George Clooney has already shown us how far a kind word (and a Hol­ly­wood smile, killer looks and dia­logue by Elmore Leonard) can get you. Sexy Beast makes a bold and unusu­al case for drilling through the wall of a swim­ming pool in some skimpy orange Speedos. Even more inter­est­ing is the 30 Min­utes or Less notion of strap­ping dyna­mite to Jesse Eisen­berg and boot­ing him into the bank with a bag with a big dol­lar sign on it. Win-win!

But for sheer bloody-mind­ed­ness, it’s hard to look past Clint Eastwood’s choice of muni­tions in Thun­der­bolt and Light­foot. How would a man so close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the most pow­er­ful hand­gun in the world approach break­ing into a bank vault? Cor­rect, he would fire an anti-tank can­non at it. Remem­ber, this ain’t brain surgery, folks.

The (tech­ni­cal­ly) suc­cess­ful raids in Quick Change and The Dark Knight both involve clown dis­guis­es, so that’s a fair­ly good bat­ting aver­age. Plus, every­one loves a clown, right? Peren­ni­al near­ly-man Thomas Jane put all his eggs in one bas­ket by pre­dict­ing that bank tellers would get some sort of blurred wank-blind­ness from his overblown porn actor get-up in South African heist no-no Stander, while George Burns, Art Car­ney and Lee Stras­berg real­ly weren’t try­ing hard enough with their Grou­cho-glass­es get-up in geezer-caper Going in Style.

For­mer US Pres­i­dents? It’s been done. Those nuns in Ben Affleck’s The Town? There are too many things all that mate­r­i­al could get snagged on. The stock­ing-over-the-head has been less pop­u­lar since Willem Dafoe – for rea­sons known only to the script – blew his own head off with a shot­gun in Wild at Heart, but it’s always cheap­er, more reli­able and sex­i­er than a clown cos­tume. Walk into your local bank tomor­row and see how long you last – we’re stick­ing with stockings!

There are those who will say it should begin and end with The Wild Bunch, but that film’s glo­ri­ous tagline – ​‘Nine men who came too late and stayed too long’ – does hint at the prob­lem with your entire gang being made up of gun-tot­ing super­an­nu­at­ed racist drunks. The Ladykillers offers a more mixed bag, but they may be too colour­ful a bunch for a stealth mission.

Your best bet is to keep it respectable and hide in plain sight. The out­ward­ly decent and estimable rob­bers of The League of Gen­tle­men are in fact a dis­graced rab­ble of per­verts, cads, fas­cists, drunks, cuck­olds and homo­sex­u­als that all have some­thing to prove and some­thing to hide – a per­fect arrange­ment to keep your part­ners from get­ting out of line. There may be no hon­our among thieves, but if everybody’s got the goods on every­one else, some strange form of self-serv­ing loy­al­ty keeps things together.

This is where things tend to get a bit dicey. You’ve fol­lowed all the rules, avoid­ed all the most obvi­ous pit­falls – nev­er rob a bank with John Caza­le; nev­er adver­tise for a ​‘moll’ on Craigslist; always go num­ber one and num­ber two before a job – now you just need a bit of luck on your side. If you’ve planned every­thing right it’s per­fect­ly doable to sim­ply dri­ve a hun­dred tons of gold bul­lion out of town in a fleet of dump trucks. Jere­my Irons only man­aged to roll through New York with his hard-earned in Die Hard: With a Vengeance because he’d done his homework.

But it’s usu­al­ly a fuck­ing dis­as­ter. For instance, you might think that a film called The Get­away might present a sol­id escape plan, but Peckinpah’s sweat-stained rounde­lay of rape, sui­cide, blood and Slim Pick­ens is a Kaf­ka-esque maze in which peo­ple are too busy shoot­ing lumps out of each oth­er to con­cen­trate on get­ting away.

The prize in this cat­e­go­ry must sure­ly go to The Pur­suit of DB Coop­er, star­ring Treat Williams as a bank rob­ber with a nov­el approach to the art of the get­away. Instead of rob­bing a bank and try­ing to run away with the loot, ol’ DB opts to inter­cept a cash ship­ment aboard a 727 before para­chut­ing out of the plane. Coop­er goes nowhere (along one axis, at least) and the ​“bank” roars off at 600mph! Clas­sic stuff.

An obvi­ous howler to avoid: nev­er allow your hide­out to devel­op into a fran­chis­able cook­ie store like Woody Allen in Small Time Crooks – and if you do, please choose a bet­ter name than ​‘Takin’ the Bis­cuit!’ De Niro gets it right in Heat, choos­ing a spar­tan, love­less design night­mare with all the charm of a drained fish­tank. We are invit­ed to imag­ine that this is the out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tion of his cold, com­part­men­talised heart, but real­ly it just looks as if the props depart­ment for­got to turn up. Either way, it’s func­tion­al, face­less and a dream to hoover. Job done.