The Pink Panther, 1963
The series was originally intended to focus on Sir Charles Lytton, aka the Phantom, a debonair jewel thief played by David Niven. But when audiences responded so well to Peter Sellers as Clouseau, Sir Charles was left out of subsequent movies. A charming aristocrat with a gift for seduction, he engages Clouseau’s wife as his mistress and accomplice, leading the bumbling policeman a merry dance through high-society Europe. Niven is at his roguish best: stealing diamonds and bedding princesses – all with a champagne glass in his free hand Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
Point Break, 1991
At some point in the early 90s, a (presumably very high) Hollywood exec looked out to sea and thought to himself: “What if we were to make a movie about a bunch of surfer dudes who robbed banks and cast Patrick Swayze as their leader?” And the next thing he knew, Point Break was actually happening. “This was never about the money, this was about us against the system,” Swayze’s claptrap-spouting beach Svengali tells the rest of his gang. Bodhi was the sort of bloke who, these days, would end all his Facebook status updates with “Yolo” Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar
The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938
Errol Flynn captured the true essence of Robin Hood: an eccentric aristocrat with wild hedonistic tendencies and solid socialist values. His carousing swashbuckler proves that lefties needn’t be earnest, chin-stroking vegetarians. “It’s not the Normans I hate, it’s the injustice,” he tells Maid Marian. Rampaging through Nottingham, he bellows with laughter while slaughtering Prince John’s useless henchmen by the dozen. Yes, his heart might have been in the right place, but Robin Hood was basically insane Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
Le cercle rouge, 1970
Alain Delon plays the ice-cold Gallic tea-leaf in this hypnotic heist classic. Fresh out of prison and already on the run from the law and his mob bosses, he enlists a team of ragtag accomplices and stages an audacious diamond robbery. The lengthy heist scene is delivered in total silence by director Jean-Pierre Melville, as the gang operates with meticulous stealth. This is how French robbers do their thing: no shotguns and no shouting – communicating only through a series of enigmatic shrugs. Even their balaclavas are made of stylish black silk Photograph: PR
A Fish Called Wanda, 1988
Kevin Kline is brilliant and hilarious as the psycho with intellectual pretensions, visiting London to perform a diamond heist. “You think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape?” suggests Jamie Lee Curtis as Wanda. “Apes don’t read philosophy,” he replies. “Yes they do, Otto,” says Wanda. “They just don’t understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘Every man for himself’. And the London underground is not a political movement” Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar
The Wire, 2002-2008
Gay stick-up man Omar Little (Michael K Williams) terrorised the drug dealers of Baltimore through five spectacular seasons of the HBO drama. Amid a sprawling cast of vicious gangsters, corrupt cops and violent street kids, Omar cuts a dandyish figure, sashaying through the underworld in leather trench coat and fancy head scarves. With his flowery dialogue and pithy moral insights, Omar is an almost Wildean figure. “Out here, it’s play or get played,” he is fond of pointing out. Brandishing his shotgun, he smirks at his victims: “Money ain’t got no owners, only spenders"
Photograph: HBO Photograph: PR
Reservoir Dogs, 1992
Steve Buscemi’s whingeing, cynical, stingy douchebag was the best of Quentin Tarantino’s menagerie of besuited bank robbers. He was wily enough not to get caught when the heist went bad and tough enough not to let empathy get in the way when his colleague Mr Orange lay dying in front of him: “I’m very sorry about that – but some fellas are lucky and some ain’t.” His speech on the ethics of tipping is Tarantino dialogue at its very best. Mr Pink is simultaneously hateful and hilarious – and he was the only one to get away with the loot Photograph: PR
Dick Turpin, 1978-1980
Richard O’Sullivan cut a swathe through late-70s LWT teatime entertainment as the rough-and-ready highwayman of legend. The writers portrayed him as a benevolent freedom fighter rather than the prototype car-jacker he probably was, robbing the gentry who had put his family out of house and home. O’Sullivan was brooding, swarthy and partial to jumping up on tables and sword-fighting red-coated soldiers in smoky taverns, amid tankards of ale and buxom wenches. For many of us, Turpin will always be way ahead of Robin’s Nest in O’Sullivan’s body of work Photograph: ITV/Rex Features
Only Fools and Horses, 1986
This vintage episode, The Longest Night, featured Vas Blackwood as Lennox Gilbey, the self-styled “Shadow” of Peckham. He holds up a supermarket, taking the Trotters hostage in the manager’s office overnight. Gilbey claims that continually confounded police officers gave him his nickname. “They seek him high, they seek him low, that damned elusive Sh-ad-ow!” he declares, before eventually admitting that he is just a stooge in the store-manager’s scam. Blackwood, who went on to feature-film success in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, turns in one of the all-time great Only Fools and Horses cameos Photograph: PR
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969
Self-effacing and slightly calamitous, Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy is possibly cinema’s most likable bad guy. From the moment he wins a knife fight by kicking his opponent in the balls, you’re on his side. Wisecracking his way across the wild west, laughing off the relentless pursuit of the bounty hunters hired to kill him and exchanging firecracker dialogue with Redford’s brooding Sundance, he set the template for the lovable antihero. He was originally cast to play Redford’s role but the actors decided to swap at the 11th hour Photograph: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis
