A guest post from my screenwriter buddy Will Osborne

As someone who spends a lot of his life watching films, talking about films and even on occasion, when backed into a corner, actually writing films, there’s a special place in my heart for the heist movie. As a genre it has all the elements I love: action, drama, gadgets, a good romance if it’s cooking on gas, some hairpin turns and 360s to the plot. And, of course, the best heist movies should also have a really good getaway.

In fact, for me the getaway is more important than the heist itself. So I tend to focus on movies where the action is weighted to what happens afterwards – the “will they get away with it or won’t they?” I’ll list a few of my favourites: “Riffifi”. (Although everyone goes on about the wordless twenty minutes or so of the robbery, just ignore that bit). “The Getaway”. (Obviously, although the robbery is pretty good. What’s fantastic is the way Steve McQueen falls back in love with Ali McGraw. Everyone complains about her acting, but there is real chemistry, and Peckinpah hadn’t gone crazy by then.) Then there’s that Seventies classic “Charley Varrick”, and the oddball “Quick Change” which is not for everyone but which I find funny and tense at the same time – a bit like watching your kids in a school play.

However, the point of my post today is not actually to talk about the getaway in heist movies. That was just blather, or maybe a set-up for a 360 turn at the mid point. Scanning the papers over the weekend and reading about the enormous bonuses being lavished across Wall Street, I was struck by the fact that they have ignored one of the cardinal rules of your classic heist: NEVER SPEND THE PROCEEDS OF THE ROBBERY UNTIL AFTER THE HEAT HAS DIED DOWN.

Surely to God it should be obvious that when you’ve managed to steal the best part of a trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money from under the noses of the dozy public without so much as a pound of gelignite being detonated or a couple of bank guards wasted, you must, absolutely must skedaddle to your hideout in the Hamptons or Connecticut and stay cool for a long time. No buying the mistress a fur coat (remember “Goodfellas” for Christ’s sake.) Or the good old English equivalent of taking your Mother down to Brighton in a brand new Roller for some whelks on the Sunday after you’ve hit the Glasgow to London Mail train. No, just stick with your current Gulfstream and 25,000 square-foot beach-house. Then, when things are looking cool, go out, spend a little. If they’d just done that no one would have been any the wiser and they’d have made a clean getaway. Nice.