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This chapter evaluates the British heist film. The heist movie is more than a film about robbery and financial gain; it is a carefully constructed generic type that developed in the late 1950s and evolved from both Hollywood and European cinema. The image of the gentleman crook, the jewel thief, or safe breaker who remain undetected whilst carrying out their crime is an important one in both English and French crime fiction. It was Jules Dassin's 1955 film Du rififi chez les hommes, more succinctly known as Rififi, that set the tone, structure, and aesthetic for the heist thriller and ensured that it would become ‘an international cinematic genre’. Rififi contains the three main narrative stages that will come to typify the heist thriller: the plan, the execution, and the aftermath. These stages, although often varying in length, are present in most, if not all, heist thrillers and not only shape the audiences' expectations but propel the narrative forward. The chapter then looks at Basil Dearden's The League of Gentlemen (1960) and Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast (2000).

This chapter discusses the genre of Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010). Nolan changed his mind several times about what kind of film he wanted to make. This led him to view the material at different times in terms of different genres. He has said that he initially imagined developing the general idea as a horror film, and wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers. As he set about writing it he came to view it more as a heist film, though even at this early stage he had reservations about conceiving it in this genre. It is clear that he was starting to envision something with psychological depth. The chapter reflects on the notion of genre in general, how best to identify and describe genres, and then on the characteristics of the heist and sci-fi genres in particular. It also considers the tech noir genre; films commonly identified as tech noir freely explore deeper levels of human psychology.

This chapter looks at the '50s heist picture—a subgenre of '50s gangster noir—examining John Huston's Asphalt Jungle (1950). In Huston's film, the criminal gang resembles nothing so much as a corporation that mimics the increasing organization and alienation of the “age of anxiety.” Subsequent noir heist films elaborate on this topic, dramatizing the conflict between the individual and the crime syndicate. In these “capers,” the “foot soldier” frequently finds himself caught between the police and the boss—the Law and “Murder, Inc.”—a dire predicament where, as always seems to be the case in the overdetermined universe of classic noir, there's no way out.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010). Inception blurs the distinctions between various genres. It is considered as science fiction although it does not contain many of the elements associated with the genre. It can also be identified as a kind of heist film, and the first part of the film, the extraction, certainly involves a complex robbery; but then the second part of the film, while having many of the trappings of a heist, involves putting something into a heavily guarded location rather than stealing from it. Moreover, the heist motifs and the film's character types are reminiscent of film noir. Inception can also be described as a psychological thriller and it deals with the subject of time and how dreams are related to the conscious and unconscious mind.

If the syndicate picture privileges the system while the rogue cop film valorizes the individual, the “big caper” movie represents something of a synthesis. On one hand, the heist picture reposits the gang not in the alienated form of the syndicate but of the family, a tightly knit team that’s reminiscent of the army unit in the “combat film.” The sympathetic presentation of the crew in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is one of the semantic elements, together with the ethos of professionalism, that distinguishes the classic heist picture from its ’40s predecessors. On the other hand, if the gang in the classic heist film is split between the individual criminal’s desire and a crew that demands the subsumption of that same desire in the interests of the greater good, fragmentation in the form of individual desire inevitably reasserts itself. In this sense, the law of desire understood as fate is inscribed in the very idea of a “big score,” a fatality endorsed, if not mandated, by the Production Code Administration and eloquently demonstrated by the dénouement of The Asphalt Jungle.

This chapter assesses the critical reception of Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010). Rarely in the press and media is popular cinema, of which Inception is surely an example, subject to rigorous critical examination. Occasionally, however, some writers do provide insights worth discussing at greater depth, cues to possible lines of analysis and appraisal. Justin Chang, in Variety, described the film as 'a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian Rififi'. Whether this colourful description makes valid comparisons can be determined by considering the conventions of 'heist' films. The British critic Mark Kermode has argued that the film demonstrates 'that it is possible for blockbusters and art to be the same things'. Meanwhile, many negative reviews of the film are simply dismissive and lacking in any justification, but here and there one can find some provocative statements worthy of serious consideration. In the light of contemporary theories about the nature of mind and consciousness, the notion of inception can be seriously challenged.