Lots of movies are about criminals committing crimes, but heist movies are a particularly special breed. The thieves in heist movies aren’t (usually) violent monsters hellbent on destroying society, but rather brilliant professionals who put in the legwork to pull off nearly impossible feats of skill. We may not like that they’re stealing stuff, but we can – if only in a movie – respect the heck out of their ability to accomplish a seemingly impossible task.
Heist movies have been around since nearly the dawn of cinema, but they truly flourished from the 1950s onward as a series of hardboiled American and French film noirs codified all the famous tropes that now permeate through almost every entry in the genre, from Oscar-nominated dramas like Hell or High Water to blockbuster larks like Solo: A Star Wars Story and Ocean’s 8.
Source: IGN.com The 25 Best Heist Movies Ever