"This is a hold-up"
Concluding this miniseries on vice, Timothy D. Terrell over at Calcedon looks for the golden age of bank robberies.

I was suprise, though, to see he didn't talk about the mythification of the bank robberies of the Old West and the Depression. The development of bank robberies in movies would be an interesting piece of work. In the early myths we see the underdog taking on the evil bank--hitting him in the soft underbelly. Later we see the robbers shift, becoming confused and the life of the bank robber becoming complicated. This confusion and complications mirrors, in a way, the strange new world and complex new dilemmas modern man finds himself in. Dog Day's in the Afternoon and Bandits are probably the pinnacle of the modern bank robbery.

Okay, I'm going to go watch a bank robbery film and come back to talk about something else.