Heist movies are about audacious, high-stakes crimes. Key elements include elaborate planning, generally involving a gang that has to learn to work together; a big score; suspenseful action; twists and often betrayals.
While writing Stealing Time, our time-travel jewelry heist set in 1980, we (authors Tilia Klebenov Jacobs and Norman Birnbach) discovered something fun! Our story was based on the real 1964 crime in which Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy and his gang stole dozens of gems from the American Museum of Natural History, including the famous Star of India sapphire. Turns out, Murph was inspired by Topkapi, a 1964 film about stealing a jeweled dagger from a Turkish museum. Because our target is a fictional yellow diamond called the Desert Sun stolen from a museum, we watched the movie that inspired the crime that inspired our book. We then watched dozens of diamond heist films to ensure we captured key elements into our novel. Below is a summary of twelve classic movie heists, which evaluates these movies based on the quality of the heist and the diamonds that are being targeted.