Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Heist Movies

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Starting point is 00:00:23 Offer ends March 3rd, 2025. Terms and conditions apply. invest with RBC. Offer ends March 3rd, 2025. Terms and conditions apply. Invest with RBC today. Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these quick takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public.

Starting point is 00:00:55 And these quick takes are a little more laid back and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this Quick Take episode. Shazam! Boom! Hello, squad mates. This is Paul here with another Quick Take episode, and I'm going to be doing something a little bit different here for this one. I was joking around with Josh that I am very quickly running out of gaming suggestions. And so for these Quick Take episodes here, at least on occasion, I will be diving into some other subjects that I have some Quick Takes on. And for this one here, I wanted to talk a little bit about movies. So if you're a

Starting point is 00:01:46 longtime listener to the show, you have heard me talk about how much I love movies. I love going to the movies. I try to watch a movie every day. I have even been heard on several occasions to say that I will cut my time sleeping so that way I have more time in order to do something I want. So if I'm busy during the day and I'm working a lot and we have some family activities, then I'll stay up until 2 a.m. and I'll just get four or five hours of sleep in order to squeeze in time for a movie or for some gaming. And even my very first job was working at a movie theater. And so I loved having the ability to

Starting point is 00:02:26 see movies for free. And when I was 16, working at Harkins Movie Theater out here in Arizona, I would go to the movies at least three or four times a week and just really loved always doing that. And one of my very favorite movie genres are heist movies and so I thought it would maybe be fun to talk a little bit about what my top five heist movies are and what's funny is I did a google search for best heist movies and I was just shocked at how many good ones there were on the list I saw a list of the top 25 and immediately I I was like, oh yeah, that's probably in my top five. Yeah, probably that too. And the next thing I knew, I had a list of like 14 or 15 movies. So in no particular order, I'll go ahead and just talk briefly about my top five.

Starting point is 00:03:17 And I don't know what it is about heist movies that I love so much. I think it's just the fun, the adrenaline. Obviously, as a law-abiding citizen, I would never conduct a heist. And so I think there's just a little bit of that fantasy of pulling off the perfect plan and getting rich quick. I don't know. There must just be something to that kind of fantasy that obviously you would never do in real life, but is very appealing in storytelling. So one of my favorite movies, for sure, is the movie Heat, which is directed by Michael Mann. It came out in 1995. I think everyone I know who has seen this movie loves it for the most part. It is, in my opinion, the quintessential heist movie. Everything that this movie does is just right.

Starting point is 00:04:05 It has a fantastic cast that's totally star-studded. I mean, this movie's got Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, Tom Sizemore, John Voight. There's even more than that. That's just off the top of my head. But basically, the cool thing about this movie is that Michael Mann, the guy who wrote and directed it, he had this whole idea of what if at the end of this heist movie, you are rooting equally for the cop trying to catch him to get the criminal, but you're equally rooting for the criminal to get away with the crime and to escape at the end. And so that's the whole idea. Al Pacino is the detective trying to catch him. Robert De Niro is the thief trying to escape and get away. Absolutely fantastic

Starting point is 00:04:51 movie, and it's probably my number one favorite movie of all time. Another heist movie that I really love is called Den of Thieves, which is unashamedly a complete ripoff of Heat. If you like Heat, I guarantee you, you will love Den of Thieves. Den of Thieves came out just a couple years ago, and it basically takes the same ideas of Heat where you are kind of putting a twist on the whole cops and robbers kind of thing. You've got some twisted cops who are basically the real criminals. And then you've got these criminals who have a heart of gold, and they have a background in the military, and you're not really too sure who you want to root for. Both sides are very charismatic. And Gerard Butler has never been funnier or better in a movie. Den of Thieves is kind of like Heat, but kind of to the 10th degree of ridiculousness.

Starting point is 00:05:45 Absolutely fantastic. Another heist movie that I really love, Ocean's Eleven. I think this might be the most rewatchable movie of all time. I was working at Harkins when this came out. I think it was in the year 2000. And I probably saw it four or five times in the movie theater, and I probably saw it four or five times in the movie theater, and I have probably watched it 40 times since then. I will watch Ocean's Eleven anytime I'm scrolling through movies on demand, or I'm not sure what to watch. I'll always dial into that one. It's so funny. It's so much fun, no matter how many times I've seen it. It never gets old. Again, I think Ocean's Eleven is one of those movies that you've probably already seen and you probably really love. Another heist movie that I really like that is probably

Starting point is 00:06:31 very popular but a little bit less known than Ocean's Eleven is The Town. Absolutely fantastic. Jeremy Renner, who plays Hawkeye in the Avenger movies, is so unbelievably good in the town. And the town has a little bit of a twist where the guys pull off a heist, and one of the women working in the bank, Ben Affleck, basically, ends up falling for her, and ends up kind of like stalking her and following her, and they start dating, but she doesn't know that he was one of the robbers wearing a mask when her bank got robbed. And so that throws in a little bit of this like romantic element that's a little bit twisted and weird. And that movie has a fantastic ending.

Starting point is 00:07:12 Absolutely love the town. And then the last one in the top five that I would say is Fast Five from the Fast and Furious franchise. I know when you think of Fast and Furious, you tend to think of racing and action, but Fast Five is really just a heist movie. It's all about how they are in Brazil, and basically they find out that there is this mob boss that has all of this money inside a safe, which is inside a police station, and so they make this plan to go rob it. And if you can't crack into the safe, what are you going to do? You hook up that safe to your cars and you drive the safe out and you pull it through downtown streets, destroying buildings. You know, we don't like to think about the fact that they probably killed a thousand people, you know, smashing the safe through all of these buildings along the way.

Starting point is 00:08:05 But it's really a great, fun heist movie. You get a pretty cool twist at the end. One of my favorite things in heist movies that they do in movies like Ocean's Eleven and Fast Five is where you get the flashback, and then you get to see a twist of how the heist was actually pulled off. So those are all great ones. I'm not even going to get into some of my other favorites, like The Killing, which was done by Stanley Kubrick back in the 50s. One of the greatest all-time endings to a heist movie. Bonnie and Clyde, Three Kings, Dog Day Afternoon,

Starting point is 00:08:39 Bottle Rocket, Baby Driver. There's just so many good heist movies, and I never grow tired of them. I love watching them. So I know that this quick take went a little bit longer than normal, but I highly recommend all of those heist movies. So my top five, just to summarize, Heat, Den of Thieves, The Town, Ocean's Eleven, Fast Five. If you end up checking any of those out, let me know what you guys think. Let us know on Discord or on social media, and I will be back with another Quick Take episode sometime here next week. Thanks so much, guys, for all your support. We really appreciate it. We'll see you

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Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Heist Movies

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