Sightlines · a viewing thread

Schemers, Crews, and the Big Score

A run of witty crime pictures where somebody always has an angle — watch these together for intricate plans, colliding crooks, and heists that go gloriously sideways.

Mostly crowd-pleasing good times with a couple of certified classics folded in, plus Big Deal on Madonna Street, the film-school ancestor that invented the lovably-incompetent caper — nothing here is demanding, all of it rewards a double bill.

• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
• Snatch (2000)
• Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958)
• The Italian Job (1969)
• Ocean's Eleven (2001)
• Jackie Brown (1997)
• Bullet Train (2022)
• The Nice Guys (2016)
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) — If The Nice Guys landed, this is the overlooked Shane Black original to finally pull down — same wisecracking LA neo-noir banter, a small-time thief and a hardboiled PI fumbling through a case that keeps outsmarting them.
• Go (1999) — The forgotten one that rhymes with Lock, Stock and Snatch — Doug Liman's interlocking-storylines caper where one drug deal detonates into colliding crews and everybody's angle blows up sideways at once.