Last Updated: September 12th
There’s a reason heist films are a beloved sub-genre of crime movies. They’ve long entertained us with a tried-and-true formula — a crack team is assembled, a meticulous plan laid out, a high-stakes execution that sometimes goes wrong — that works no matter the decade. The elements of a great heist film rarely change but Netflix is taking things up a notch, giving us some truly bonkers, often brilliant, caper flicks. Some are darkly comedic, some are full of action, and one takes place against the backdrop of an impending zombie apocalypse, but all of these films have one crucial thing in common: They make robbing people look like a hell of a lot of fun.
Here are the best heist movies currently streaming on Netflix.
Related: The Best True Crime Dramas Streaming Right Now
The Town (2010)
Run Time: 125 min | IMDb: 7.5/10
Ben Affleck writes, directs, and stars in this gritty heist film set in his hometown of Boston. Affleck plays Doug, a master thief planning his greatest, and last heist who becomes distracted by a romantic relationship with a bank manager he met on his last job (Rebecca Hall). As Doug and his crew orchestrate a heist involving Fenway Park, a dogged FBI agent played by Jon Hamm closes in.
Triple Frontier (2019)
Run Time: 125 min | IMDb: 6.5/10
This Netflix original heist thriller stars a whos-who of Hollywood hunks. Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal play a group of former special ops bros who reunite to take down an infamous cartel kingpin and steal his profits in the process. Isaac and Affleck look to be the leaders of the team, two men fed up with risking their necks for a country that doesn’t look after them once they’re back on home soil, and Isaac’s A Most Violent Year director J.C. Chandor is at the helm, which means a couple of plot twists and some high stakes action are in store.
Hell or High Water (2016)
Run Time: 102 min | IMDb: 7.6/10
Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Jeff Bridges star in this neo-Western crime thriller about a pair of brothers, who go on a bank-robbing spree to save their family’s ranch. Pine plays Toby, a down-on-his-luck father struggling to live right under mountains of inherited debt while Foster plays Tanner, his ex-con brother who has a wild streak that often endangers the two men on their jobs. Bridges is the aging sheriff tasked with bringing them to justice, but his job is made harder by the locals, who have no love for the bank chain the boys are stealing from. It’s a gritty, unapologetic tale of a forgotten America brought to life by some brilliant performances and an impressive script from Taylor Sheridan.
Army of Thieves (2021)
Run Time: 127 min | IMDb: 6.4/10
Zack Snyder realized the best character in his Army of the Dead flick deserved his own origin story so he’s delivered that with this prequel which follows bank-robbing German-stud Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer, also directing this time) on an all-together different heist. When a mysterious woman named Gwendoline (Game of Thrones star Nathalie Emmanuel) recruits a still-green Dieter for a job that tasks him with cracking a series of legendary safes across Europe, he’s thrust into an even more dangerous world of criminals.
Snatch (2000)
Run Time: 103 min | IMDb: 8.3/10
Brad Pitt and Jason Statham star in this crime comedy from Guy Ritchie. One half of the story follows Benicio del Toro who plays a diamond thief trying to sell his stolen goods to some double-crossing gangsters. The other story follows Statham as a small-time boxing promoter struggling to get out from under the thumb of a ruthless drug lord with a love for torture. Ritchie’s patented vibe is on full display here which makes it a quintessentially fun British jaunt.
Den of Thieves (2018)
Run Time: 140 min | IMDb: 7/10
Gerard Butler plays an aging cop hunting down a criminal mastermind in this gritty heist flick. Butler’s “Big Nick” heads up an elite L.A. County sheriff’s unit charged with stopping a planned robbery at the Federal Reserve Bank. Pablo Schreiber plays Ray Merrimen, a veteran with a special skill set who’s assembled a crew of top-notch bank robbers to pull off the job. The fun of this film is in watching Butler and Schreiber square off, each trying to outsmart the other in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse. Good luck figuring out who’s who in this scenario.
Wheelman (2017)
Run Time: 88 min | IMDb: 6.4/10
Frank Grillo plays a getaway driver racing to discover who betrayed him after a bank robbery gone wrong in this crime mystery. He’s also an ex-con in deep with the Boston mob. To pay back his debt, he agrees to chauffeur a bank heist, one that goes horribly wrong when Grillo gets a mysterious call instructing him to ditch his accomplices and fork over the money. Grillo is the perfect kind of hard-nosed, no-nonsense leading man to front this kind of action-packed neo-noir, and you’ll have a damn good time watching him put the pedal to the metal in this one.
The Italian Job (2003)
Run Time: 111 min | IMDb: 7/10
American remakes of British classics rarely deliver but this modern heist flick has a couple of things going for it: a charismatic cast, a compelling villain, and some fun heist action. In the film, Mark Wahlberg, Donald Sutherland, Jason Statham, Seth Green, and Mos Def play veteran thieves betrayed by one of their own (Ed Norton). The group recruits an expert safe cracker (Charlize Theron) to pull off an impossible revenge job.
