The 10 Greatest Heist Thrillers of the 21st Century, Ranked

The heist thriller remains one of cinema’s enduring pleasures: a blend of precision, timing, misdirection and the intoxicating fantasy of outsmarting the system. In the best examples, stealing is rarely the point; what matters is how the theft reframes power—who plans, who improvises and who realizes too late they were never part of the game.

This list ranks the finest 21st-century crime capers, films that treat the genre as both a blueprint for action and a means of exploring character. The selections stretch the form in different directions, offering energetic plots, memorable figures and, on occasion, richer themes beneath the surface thrills.

Entries range from Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, with its stolen diamond, illegal boxing matches and Brad Pitt’s near-indecipherable accent, to Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, whose Kremlin infiltration and Burj Khalifa sequence play like high-tech burglaries.

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