Category: crime story

  • The Big Knockoff: 14 Films With Armored Car Heists

    The Big Knockoff: 14 Films With Armored Car Heists

    Burt Lancaster struggles for the gun. “Criss Cross” (1949). By Paul Parcellin If the movies are any indication, the 1940s and ’50s, especially the ’50s, must have been the golden age of armored car robberies — they were getting knocked over like clay pigeons in a shooting gallery. A common armored car robbery movie plot:…

  • The Key to Marlowe’s Conundrum is In a Can of Cat Food

    The Key to Marlowe’s Conundrum is In a Can of Cat Food

    Elliot Gould, “The Long Goodbye” (1973) One of my favorite neo-noirs is “The Long Goodbye” (1973), Robert Altman’s adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, published 20 years earlier. Altman’s most drastic alteration of Chandler’s opus is placing the story in the 1970s instead of eight years after the end of World…