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The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/a><\/p>\n This is an edition of <\/i>The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. <\/i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/a><\/small><\/p>\n Glass-cutting power tools, priceless crown jewels, and two scooters to escape on. The story of the thieves who targeted the Louvre last weekend could have been ripped from a movie. For anybody feeling inspired (ideally not to commit a robbery of their own), The Atlantic<\/i>\u2019s writers and editors have recommended seven heist films that won\u2019t swindle you out of a good time.<\/p>\n Inside Man<\/i><\/b> (streaming on Netflix)<\/b><\/p>\n Besides being an excellent genre film, Inside Man <\/i>is a testament to Spike Lee\u2019s range. The plot follows a Dog Day Afternoon<\/i>\u2013style hostage situation<\/a>, a sometimes-thrilling, sometimes-goofy d\u00e9tente between bank robbers and police officers that is miles away, conceptually, from the barbed cultural critique of Do the Right Thing<\/i> or the biographical sweep of Malcolm X<\/i>. Race certainly figures into Inside Man<\/i>, and the screenplay (written by Russell Gewirtz) contains moments of social commentary, some less subtle than others\u2014but by the mid-2000s, Spike Lee had nothing left to prove on that front. And what a cast! Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clive Owen, and, of course Denzel Washington, who outshines all of the rest. In a just world, we\u2019d get a blockbuster this good every year.<\/p>\n \u2014 Will Gottsegen, staff writer<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n To Catch a Thief<\/i> (streaming on MGM+ and Paramount+)<\/b><\/p>\n If you watched footage of that ladder truck pulling up to the Louvre and thought, Hmm \u2026 needs more <\/i>glamour, here is your perfectly feline fix. I will confess that the heists at the center of Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s 1955 film are not themselves that sophisticated, but the movie is really more preoccupied with how good Cary Grant looks in a tuxedo anyhow; it is very French in that way.<\/p>\n Grant is a retired burglar who\u2019s pulled back into the game when a copycat frames him. He joins bejeweled mother-and-daughter tourists (played by Jessie Royce Landis and Grace Kelly, respectively) ostensibly to smoke out the real culprit but mostly to flirt a lot with both of them.<\/p>\n To Catch a Thief<\/i> may fail as a thriller, but can you really hold that against a film that unfolds along the French Riviera? Only the south of France produces those turquoises and fuchsias, and only Technicolor captures them. The setting outsparkles even Grant. It\u2019s a fabulous place to spend a few hours planning what you\u2019d wear to a robbery.<\/p>\n \u2014 Drew Goins, senior editor<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Ocean\u2019s Eleven <\/i>(available to rent on YouTube, Prime Video, and Apple TV+)<\/b><\/p>\n Ocean\u2019s Eleven<\/i> makes crime look like choreography: a heist unfolding exactly as it should, with just enough chaos to keep it interesting. Less than a day after walking out of prison, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is already scheming to rob three Las Vegas casinos in one night. He has three rules: don\u2019t hurt anyone, don\u2019t steal from people who don\u2019t deserve it, and play like you have nothing to lose.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not usually one for suspense (I\u2019m the kind of person who checks how a movie ends while I\u2019m still watching it), but this is the one heist film I can sit through. It\u2019s not stressful to watch\u2014just satisfying, clever, and fun. Not only is it a classic, but it also never feels dated; no matter how many times I\u2019ve seen it, the cast always clicks, and the humor still lands. By the end, you\u2019ll probably catch yourself wishing you could join the crew\u2014not for the money or the win, but for the satisfaction of pulling off something that elegant.<\/p>\n \u2014 Rafaela Jinich, assistant editor<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Good Thief<\/i> (streaming on the Roku Channel)<\/b><\/p>\n On its face, Neil Jordan\u2019s remake of a 1956 French caper seems like a poor man\u2019s Ocean\u2019s Eleven<\/i>. (It doesn\u2019t help that the only streaming version I could find looks like it was bootlegged with a camcorder.) Nick Nolte plays Bob, a charming heroin addict and aging thief attempting one last score: robbing the vault in a Monte Carlo casino on the eve of the Grand Prix, the busiest night of the year. It\u2019s just the type of impossible heist a man out of chances would try, which is what Bob lets the authorities think and Jordan lets the viewers think while they are both up to something else.<\/p>\n Modern heist movies tend to feature genius thieves masterminding Rube Goldberg\u2013esque plans that defy physics, logic, and credulity. But in The Good Thief<\/i>\u2019s winsome third act, Bob and his ragtag crew improvise their way through a scheme that hinges on the film\u2019s true subject: luck. Luck may not be fair, but it is occasionally democratic and can find even a down-and-out junkie gambler if he puts on a tuxedo nice enough to fool security.<\/p>\n \u2014 Evan McMurry, senior editor<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Baby Driver<\/i> (streaming on Prime Video)<\/b><\/p>\n Some may classify the getaway driver as the most boring person on a crew of hardened criminals: no shoot-outs, no lifelike masks, no rappelling skills required. But the director Edgar Wright made sure the same couldn\u2019t be said about the protagonist of Baby Driver<\/i>. Miles, also known as \u201cBaby\u201d (Ansel Elgort), has tinnitus<\/a>, and music helps him drown out the ringing. The songs he listens to score his high-octane escapes after a robbery goes down; he evades a fleet of cop cars on the highway to the frenetic beat of \u201cBellbottoms<\/a>,\u201d and embarks on a parkour-style speed run through a mall to \u201cHocus Pocus<\/a>.\u201d I can\u2019t promise that it\u2019s a relaxing watch, but this twist on the heist genre is worth a couple of hours of your evening. Plus, you may even leave with a new song stuck in your head.<\/p>\n \u2014 Stephanie Bai, associate editor<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Mastermind<\/i> (out now in theaters)<\/b><\/p>\n In the opening scene of Kelly Reichardt\u2019s latest film, a man pilfers a small object from a local museum to practice for a larger burglary he has planned\u2014but this isn\u2019t exactly a heist movie. The Mastermind<\/i>, which I recently reviewed<\/a>, follows J. B. (Josh O\u2019Connor), a father of two and an amateur thief in 1970 Massachusetts, whose M.O. amounts to glancing around to make sure the guards aren\u2019t paying attention. But his more ambitious scheme, to steal four Arthur Dove paintings with a few accomplices, soon goes sideways after he speeds off with the art in his trunk. For much of The Mastermind<\/i>\u2019s run time, Reichardt examines how J. B.\u2019s poorly conceived plan upends his life. There are no heist-movie hallmarks\u2014no scenes of him carefully assembling a crew, no voice-overs outlining the master plan. Reichardt, it turns out, is the one doing the double-crossing. Yet the film\u2019s small-scale, low-stakes drama fuels its appeal. Reichardt roots around in her protagonist\u2019s mind to understand why he\u2019d so casually risk losing his comfortable middle-class life for a few pieces of art.<\/p>\n \u2014 Shirley Li, staff writer<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Fantastic Mr. Fox <\/i>(streaming on Disney+)<\/b><\/p>\n The object of theft in Fantastic Mr. Fox<\/i> is not money or jewels\u2014it\u2019s food and drink from three oafish farmers. As someone who finds many heist movies for grown-ups complicated and hard to follow, I love the simplicity of this movie about a patriarch fox who wants to feed his family and friends and bring some excitement into his middle-age era. The action scenes are lively and suspenseful, but the real joy of the movie is its meticulously constructed visual world and the sweet, melancholic portrayal of family life.<\/p>\n \u2014 Eleanor Barkhorn, senior editor<\/p>\n Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic<\/i>:<\/strong><\/p>\n The Week Ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n The Running Ground<\/i>, a memoir by Nicholas Thompson on family, personal growth, and lessons he learned through a lifelong habit of running<\/a> (out Tuesday)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Season 4 of The Witcher<\/i><\/a>, following a monster hunter embroiled in a bloody and magical battle (out Thursday on Netflix<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Anniversary<\/i><\/a>, a thriller about a tight-knit family whose unity shatters as a movement called \u201cThe Change\u201d takes hold of the nation (out Wednesday in theaters)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n Essay<\/strong><\/p>\n What an Iranian Filmmaker Learned In Prison<\/p>\n By Arash Azizi<\/i><\/p>\n For more than a decade, after the government of Iran deemed his work \u201cpropaganda against the system,\u201d the filmmaker Jafar Panahi was banned from making films or leaving the country. He spent some of that time in prison and under house arrest, but he still found ways to produce art\u2014including the 2011 documentary This Is Not a Film<\/i>, which was recorded in his Tehran apartment and smuggled<\/a> into the Cannes Film Festival on a flash drive. The ban has since been lifted; even so, Panahi chose to make his latest film, It Was Just an Accident<\/i>, in secret, without an official permit. This month, he showed the thriller at the New York Film Festival.<\/p>\n Much of Iran\u2019s clandestine cinema, including some of Panahi\u2019s earlier works, is didactic, focused on valorizing the victims of the regime\u2019s injustices. But It Was Just an Accident<\/i> turns the camera inward, toward the pugnacious debates that pit Iranians against one another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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