Escapes in Heist Escape Movies Rated. Do you Agree With Black Cat?

Posted on: 25/11/2022

By Tim Carter (Owner of Black Cat Treasure Hunts)

The Brighton Heist Escape is up and running. Your chance to pull off a daring robbery without suffering too many consequences if you fail, apart from a low `Escape Rating` score! The question is will you compare favourably to the bank heists attempted in your favourite films and tv programs? Here Black Cat Treasure Hunts look at a selection of these fictional and real heists as portrayed on screen and gives them an escape rating too (in terms of how successful the heist (s) were).

1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Great film, in the Western genre, that initially shows successful heists. However, Butch (Paul Newman) overdoes it with the explosives on a heist from a train with the outcome that he and Sundance (Robert Redford) are chased by a posse to Bolivia. After going straight for a while, they eventually revert to numerous, easy bank heists before being surrounded by hundreds of Bolivian soldiers. Rating: 9/10 dropping to 8/10 as they fail to escape one last time.

2. The Sting: Newman and Redford at their peak team up again on another heist based on truth. Carrying out the perfect con (`sting`) on an unsuspecting mob boss is for me the perfect revenge heist as they rob him of a huge amount of money. Slick and successful and both survive. Rating 10/10.

3. Reservoir Dogs: A jewellery heist goes terribly wrong and only one of the eight in the gang gets away. This Tarantino classic has the robbers assuming aliases by way of colours. It doesn`t really help them as only Mr Pink, who didn`t like being called Mr Pink, makes the escape. Heist rating: 3/10.

4. Money Heist: Popular Spanish tv series concentrates on two heists (in the Spanish Mint and the National bank--fictional). Half the gang make it whilst the other half meet a bloody end. Organised by a mastermind, who could argue achieved most of his goals, the heists nevertheless hit unexpected setbacks. Success rating 6/10.

5. Ocean`s Eleven: Danny Ocean (George Clooney) heads a team including Brad Pitt and Matt Damon who carry out a near perfect heist of three Las Vegas casinos on the same night. Rivalling The Sting for success, I only rate it one lower as Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) ultimately realises who has conned him and arranges for Ocean to be jailed for breaking his parole conditions. Ocean lives to fight another day though...hence Oceans 12 and 13.  Heist Rating 9/10.

6. Hatton Garden Heist/Brinks Mat/The Great Train Robbery have all had tv series and films made about these real-life heists. The success of them was debatable as they all had unexpectedly high, record-breaking heists that met with very mixed results as lack of trust between thieves/silly mistakes and difficulties associated with shifting huge takes of jewellery, gold and money caused problems. In order I would award 3/10 (amateurs caught out)...5/10 (mysterious disappearance of the gold, but a number of the gang still jailed)...7/10 (well..at least Ronnie Biggs got to Brazil, but not as professional as the Brinks Mat team).

7. The Usual Suspects featured the classic photo of the line-up. The heist is a revenge on the NYPD and initially goes smoothly but ends in disaster. 27 out of 29 of the gang are massacred in a boat fire, arranged by heist mastermind, the enigmatic Keyser Soze who escapes . Heist rating: 2/10.

8. Baby Driver. Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a young, getaway driver for a heist gang. `One last heist` before he can escape himself with his girlfriend, Deborah (played by Lily James), ends in complete and bloody disaster for the rest of the gang. Baby himself is jailed for 25 years, but this is reduced to 5 years on parole and, on release, is met by Deborah in a vintage car. Baby uses his heist takings to pay for his foster father`s care home fees.
The romantic ending promises of happier times ahead for Baby and Deborah and a slight difficulty in how to rate the heist! (1 out of 10 rising to 7/10?)

9. Brooklyn 99 Halloween Heist. This is one of a series of heist episodes in the hilarious NYPD comedy. Intricate, funny, no-one dies, this team building event has a prize to be won each time amongst the officers. Do your best to see a Halloween heist episode if you only ever see one. The heist rating has to be 10/10 for the winner of each heist!!

What is your favourite heist film/tv series? How would you rate them purely on the success of the heist? More importantly are you ready to carry out your own heist escape and be rated out of 100 by Black Cat?!
Contact via email on info@blackcattreasurehunts.co.uk or call (01323) 655346.