Maybe it's because it's a more palatable news item than the government shutdown, but this past weekend's Louvre heist, wherein a group of thieves broke into one of the world's most famous museums and ran off with priceless jewelry, has taken the internet by storm.
And while I'm as invested in the who/what/why as anybody, I've also been hit with a healthy dose of nostalgia. Namely, this entire thing, as unfortunate and tragic as it is, is giving peak millennium Hollywood heist vibes. The perpetrators, clad in yellow vests, ascended to the second story of the Apollo Gallery, where they broke through a window with power tools. Once inside, they broke open display cases housing the French crown jewels and zoomed away on power scooters. The whole episode was over in about eight minutes.
As soon as I caught the headlines over the weekend, the first thing I thought was, "This feels like The Da Vinci Code." As a big bookworm, I, like many others, went through a Dan Brown phase. His most famous novel was published in 2003 and adapted for the screen in 2006. Though wildly popular, Brown wasn't alone in the heist genre. For some reason, the turn of the century and mid-aughts were a major heist phase for cinema. Ocean's 11 came out in 2001, followed by Ocean's 12 and Ocean's 13 in 2004 and 2007. The Thomas Crown Affair, Mad Money, Inception, Tower Heist and Now You See Me rounded out of the era, which continued to trickle in through the late teens with Baby Driver and The Goldfinch.
Reading the news reports felt surreal. Was Tom Hanks running in and out of Parisian alleys? Was George Clooney strutting around in a tuxedo? While I do hope that the stolen jewels—among which include a tiara and brooch of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III—are recovered quickly, there is one other thing pressing on my mind. When is the movie coming out?!
