Tag Archives: Matt Dillon

The heist always goes wrong, part 3: 10 of the best heist films you’ve never seen

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Andrew Nette| 20 Comments

payroll-1961As readers of this site know, I love a good heist film, the ingenuity of their plots and the variations they come in, whether it be the all star team assembled for the job of a life time or a group of desperate men and women trying for one last big score.

Everyone can name their favourite heist films and, for the most part, it is usually the big name titles such as The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) and the French classic, Rififi (1955). Indeed, I listed these and many other well know heist movies in previous posts on this site, ‘The heist always goes wrong, part 1: ten of the best heist movies ever made’ and ‘The heist always goes wrong, part 2: reader picks and other favourite heist movies’.

But what about the lessor known heist films that are great but which nobody knows about?

To celebrate the release of my second crime novel, Gunshine State, I have compiled the following list of the 10 best heist films you’ve never seen.

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Operation Amsterdam (1959)

Operation Amsterdam functions as both a war and a heist film. Peter Finch plays Jan Smit, a British intelligence officer ordered to infiltrate the city of Amsterdam, which is on the verge of being overrun by invading German forces, and prevent the city’s diamond reserves from falling into Nazi hands.… Read more

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Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Christopher Lee, Crime film, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, French cinema, Heist films, Stanley Baker

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Matt Dillon’s City of Ghosts: film as a time machine

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

GhostRe-watching City of Ghosts, Matt Dillon’s 2002 crime movie set in Cambodia, has got me thinking a lot about film as a personal time machine.

It’s not a great film, but having worked on and off as a journalist in Phnom Penh in the nineties and again in 2008, for me it’s a vivid depiction of a Cambodia that is quickly changing in the face of rapid, if very uneven, economic development.

Jimmy (Dillon) is a long con artist who begins to grow a conscience after the fake insurance company he’s been fronting forfeits on claims to the survivors of a hurricane. In order to get his share of the proceeds from the scam and escape the clutches of the FBI, Jimmy travels from New York to Thailand where Marvin (James Caan), his mentor and the brains behind their operation has fled.

Landing in Bangkok, Jimmy meets up with another of Marvin’s associates, Casper (Stellan Skarsgard), who informs him Marvin has gone to Cambodia to escape his former partners in the Russian mob who unbeknown to Jimmy put up the seed money for their insurance scam.

Jimmy decides to follow him, arranging to meet up with Casper in Phnom Penh at a hotel called the Belleville. Most frequent travellers to Asia will have stayed in at least one place like the Belleville, a magnet for dead-beat expats, burn-outs and tourists on expired visas, who hang around the bar providing cryptic advice and Vietnam flashbacks to whoever will pay attention and buy them drinks.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Crime film

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