A new comedy about professional shoplifters, headlined by Cate Blanchett and a predominantly female cast, uses a Met Gala heist to critique the fashion industry and capitalism while prompting discussion on strong female roles and post‑MeToo representation.
, the cast was asked what effect their “strong female roles” would have on the audience.
“Encouraging children to crime,” Cate Blanchettheist comedy about a group of professional shoplifters who find themselves caught up in a much bigger struggle against the exploitative fashion industry and the evils of capitalism.is led by a predominantly female cast including Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Poppy Liu. Still, given how Hollywood’s most famous heist flicks are a bit of a boys’ club, that female solidarity becomes its own powerful subtextual element of Riley’s social commentary.
While heist movies likewill occasionally feature a woman or two on the team, movies where women truly drive the heists are much rarer. Here are 11 movies where women are the ones who realize that some crimeis the choice to set it at the Met Gala. On the one hand, it’s a fittingly stylish equivalent to the Vegas casino setting of the original.
On the other, it’s a baffling backdrop for the film’s thesis that women are better suited to this heist because “a him gets noticed, a her gets ignored, and for once we want to be ignored. ” That’s famouslythe case when it comes to flamboyant fashion events, but it’s hard to hold that against the movie too much when it lets Sandra Bullock, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, and especially Anne Hathaway and Cate Blanchett have this much fun together.
When, there was a lot of handwringing about what the movie had to say in a “post #MeToo world,” but, really, the best thing about this flawed but entertaining spin-off is that it’s not actually trying to say anything all that meaningful about the female experience. The women aren’t given sympathetic backstories or altruistic motives. They’re just pulling off a multimillion-dollar jewel theft for the love of the game and the joy of the camaraderie.
While the heist genre is often associated with light, zippy fun, there are some compellingly weighty entries too—including this ’90s classic from director F. Gary Gray starring Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, and Kimberly Elise as a quartet of friends from the Los Angeles projects. Watching the women’s wildly different personalities bounce off one another is a reminder of what’s lost in ensembles where one character is tasked with representing their entire race and gender.
Here Latifah gets to be a hotheaded showboat, Elise gets to be sweetly naïve, Pinkett Smith gets to be a quiet dreamer, and Fox gets to be a pragmatist who argues that robbing a bank is just “taking away from the system that’s fucking us all anyway. ”gives each of the four lifelong friends their own unique motivations for turning to crime to break free of the cycle of poverty and dehumanization.
But while not having money can destroy lives,knows having money can do the same. Gray’s film reaches high heights as an action thriller, but even higher ones as a character-driven drama that brushes up against the poignancy of a Greek tragedy—all while delivering one of the best“I want to rob,” begs entitled teen Nicki Moore in Sofia Coppola’s stylish exploration of the real-life “Bling Ring” gang who stole over $3 million from various celebrity homes in the late 2000s.
While heist movies tend to either glamorize the thrill of thieving or lean into the tragedy of reaching for something you can never have, Coppola deploys an intriguingly ambiguous middle ground. In a culture that obsesses over celebrity and glamorizes overconsumption—where the biggest reality TV stars have walk-in closets just for their Louboutin heels—where does the rot truly start?
Coppola captures both how cool the members of the Bling Ring feel pulling off their various heists and how profoundly uncool their break-ins actually seem in practice; they steal from stars who have too much stuff to notice in order to sell their loot for cash they don’t actually need. There’s a streak of nihilism intook on the difficulty of the American Dream.
When pitch-perfect high school couple Diane and Jack find themselves pregnant and kicked out by their parents, Diane and her cheerleading squad get inspired by a girls’ night viewing ofto make ends meet by committing armed robbery at a local grocery store bank branch.
“All we have to do is watch a bunch of movies and learn from their mistakes! ” perpetually perky Diane tells a murderer’s row of early-aughts teen stars including Mena Suvari, Melissa George, Rachel Blanchard, Sara Marsh, and Alexandra Holden. With its oddball comedic sensibility ,argues that having a supportive himbo boyfriend is nice, but it’s your cheerleading sisters who truly have your back when it counts.
Steve McQueen’s neo-noir thriller is about women stepping into a man’s world. Specifically, Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, and Michelle Rodriguez enter the realm of organized crime when their husbands are killed while robbing a local crime boss—leaving the widows to pay back the debt. That means pulling off their husbands’ plan to steal $5 million from the home of a corrupt Chicago alderman.
Roping in a pre-Cynthia Erivo as the fourth in their quartet, the widows must grow from women who are used to being taken care of into active players in their own survival. That makesa heavier entry in the heist movie genre—less about the thrill of stealing from the rich and more about the desperation that forces women to step into a steely power they didn’t know they had.is really more of a dramedy about the crushing cycles of capitalism.
Diane Keaton stars as an upper-middle-class housewife who has to take a job as a janitor at a Federal Reserve Bank when her husband is downsized. There she meets fellow blue-collar employees Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes and puts together a plan to swipe the cash the Reserve is going to shred anyway.
“We’re a consumer society, aren’t we? ” Danson explains in an interrogation room framing device.
“She got consumed. ” Inspired by a real-life British theft and directed bywas poorly reviewed when it came out but has some interesting things to say about greed, victimless crimes, and the hollowness of the American Dream—not to mention the kind of unlikely female friendships you can only make at work. and Peter O’Toole did the same in this 1966 William Wyler charmer.
O’Toole may play the experienced art thief, but it’s Hepburn who ropes him into helping her steal a famous Venus statuette from a Paris art institute before the museum can discover her art forger father lent them a fake. That leads to a delightfully innovative late-night heist set piece as Hepburn and O’Toole hide out in a utility closet before going proto-MacGyver to get around the museum’s advanced security system.
As much a romantic comedy as a crime caper,Most heist movies linger in the planning process, but this 2006 Western sees Salma Hayek and Penélope Cruz team up mid-action, as two 19th-century Mexican women with very different reasons for robbing the same bank. Cruz is a horse-loving farm girl looking to steal from the rich to give to the poor, while Hayek is a privileged snob seeking revenge against the cruel American land baron who killed her father to steal his property.
Together, they turn to famed bank robber Sam Shepard to teach them the true art of the heist so they can protect the people of Mexico from exploitation.were fueled by the mid-aughts male gaze and a dollop of lesbian subtext. Add in a charming comedic turn from Steve Zahn as an early forensic scientist, and this one is perfect for anyone who feels likeis interested in female desire in all its forms.
“For me, stealing has always been a lot like sex,” ex-con handywoman Corky tells Caesar’s sultry moll Violet . Not only do Corky and Violet want each other, they want the $2 million that’s about to pass through Caesar’s apartment. That means they have to trust one another—and outthink the mafiosos around them—to get it.
Pulling from the tradition of Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock as much as Quentin Tarantino,puts a lesbian romance at the heart of the kind of crime-heist story that would traditionally treat its female characters as little more than fashionable accessories. in any category, but there’s something heist-like about the heightened style that backdrops this story of strippers who come up with a scheme to drug rich Wall Street guys and max out their credit cards. Set on both sides of the 2008 financial crisis and featuring standout performances from Constance Wu and a should-have-been-Oscar-nominated Jennifer Lopez,is about the similarly thin line between glamour and struggle—and the emotional risk of treating your criminal colleagues like family.
Lest it seem like heists are only for adult women, a tween Kristen Stewart sets an inspiring example for little girls everywhere by pulling one off in this mid-aughts family comedy released in the wake ofstars Stewart as a rock climbing whiz who decides to rob an evil bank to steal the $250,000 her family needs to fund the experimental surgery that will let her injured dad walk again. Though she ropes in her mechanically minded friend and a burgeoning middle school tech expert , they’re mostly just in it because they have a crush on her. Stewart is the brains behind the operation—and the Ethan Hunt-style thrill-seeker who has to free-climb 100 feet into a high-tech bank vault.
Whileisn’t a particularly great movie, it’s fun to watch a kid’s feature go through all the classic heist tropes so earnestly; all with a savvy, decidedly not-romance-obsessed female lead at its center.
Female Heist Movies Fashion Industry Satire Post Metoo Cinema Cate Blanchett Female Solidarity
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