7 Museum Heist Films to Watch After the Louvre Robbery

Real life rarely delivers us a perfectly cinematic news story, but recently, we got a modern art heist so daring and brazen that it has the whole world rapt.

The Louvre heist was a daylight robbery on Oct. 19, resulting in the theft of jewelry worth millions. The culprits used a truck-mounted ladder and power tools to break into the Galerie d'Apollon. In a matter of minutes, they stole eight pieces of Napoleonic jewelry, including items belonging to Empress Eugénie and Queen Hortense, before disappearing on scooters.

If you've been following the news and enjoying the memes, refreshing for updates on whether French authorities will catch the thieves before the jewels get melted down, you're probably hungry for more heist stories.

Cinema has been feeding our fascination with art theft for decades. These are seven films (and one book) you'll enjoy if the Louvre heist has you hooked.

The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

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Let's start with the most recent entry, a movie I loved, which just hit theaters last week.

Kelly Reichardt's take on the art heist film is about as far as possible from the dazzle and jazz of Ocean's Eleven. Set in 1970s Massachusetts, it follows J.B. Mooney, an unemployed husband and father who decides to rob a local art museum. He's a terrible thief, though, and bumbles through the aftermath.

Reichardt was inspired by the 1972 robbery of the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, in which two Gauguins, a Picasso, and a Rembrandt were stolen.

As she told Roger Ebert, "I like day-to-day stuff, and then you take day-to-day stuff, then you put it in the mold of some sort of genre, then try to make those things work together."

The result is a film that's both grim and warm. What really happens after you do something like this? At one point, we spend several minutes watching Josh O'Connor's character struggle to hide his stolen paintings in a barn. It's funny and uncomfortable, and painfully realistic. See this one if you can.

How to Steal a Million (William Wyler)

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William Wyler's romantic caper is all champagne bubbles and beautiful gowns. It stars Audrey Hepburn as the daughter of an art forger who needs to steal one of her father's fake sculptures from a Paris museum before experts discover it's a fraud. Peter O'Toole plays the burglar she recruits.

The movie is elegant and playful, everything we want from a heist film, which is probably why everyone finds the recent Louvre news so charmingly anachronistic. How could something like this happen in 2025?

The film also features a version of Paris that feels like a fantasy.

The Thomas Crown Affair (John McTiernan)

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Pierce Brosnan plays Thomas Crown, a billionaire who steals San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, a famous painting by Monet. He's breaking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the thrill. Rene Russo is the insurance investigator who falls for him while trying to catch him. Crown doesn't need the money. He steals because he's bored, because he can.

It's a sleek remake of the 1968 original.

"I didn't want to remake it," John McTiernan told Bobbie Wygant. "I wanted to leave it as it is, and maybe make a compliment to it, or make a variation on a theme."

Entrapment (Jon Amiel)

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After news of the Louvre broke, I heard so many people online say, "Where were the lasers?" And I'm sure this movie is to blame.

The same year Pierce Brosnan was burgling in The Thomas Crown Affair, Sean Connery was pulling off an even more audacious heist in Entrapment. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays an insurance investigator (sensing a pattern with these '90s heist films?) who goes undercover to catch thief Robert "Mac" MacDougal.

Here, the target is a Chinese mask. The training sequence where Zeta-Jones navigates a laser security system has been endlessly parodied, but it holds up better than it has any right to.

Sure, the film has aged awkwardly in other respects, and yes, there's a 30-year age gap between the leads. But as an escapism story, with its globe-trotting and acrobatics, it's a fun watch.

The Great Muppet Caper (Jim Henson)

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Yes, really. I love this film.

Jim Henson's sequel to The Muppet Movie includes a subplot where Miss Piggy is framed for stealing jewelry, and the Muppets have to figure out who the real thieves are. There's a heist sequence involving synchronized swimming. Charles Grodin plays a fashion designer with a secret criminal identity, and he's after a jewel called the Baseball Diamond. What's not to love? It's absolutely ridiculous and delightful.

Heist stories are fundamentally about fantasy and spectacle, and you get that tenfold from the Muppets.

Museo (Alonso Ruizpalacios)

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Mexico had its own art theft that shocked the nation. Museo tells the true story of that heist. The Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City was targeted during Christmas 1985, when 140 priceless pre-Columbian artifacts were stolen.

Director Alonso Ruizpalacios tells the story by following Juan (Gael García Bernal) and his friend Benjamín (Leonardo Ortizgris), two slacker veterinary students who decide to rob the museum almost on a whim. They notice the museum's lax security and simply decide to walk in and take some of the most important artifacts in Mexican history.

This is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist (Colin Barnicle)

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This documentary series covers the 1990 theft of 13 works from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, including pieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Manet. Two men dressed as police officers entered the museum, tied up the guards, and walked out with artwork worth an estimated $500 million.

None of it has ever been recovered. More than 30 years later, the crime remains unsolved.

If you're following the Louvre case and wondering whether the jewels will ever be found, this documentary might offer a reality check.

Of the Louvre caper, art crime expert Alain Bauer told CBS News that while authorities may catch the thieves, they're unlikely to recover the treasure.

Bonus: Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo

Not a film, but if you've burned through all these movies and you're still hungry for art crime stories, pick up this book.

Provenance recounts how con man John Drewe fabricated provenance documents to legitimize hundreds of forged paintings by artist John Myatt, works that eventually infiltrated British museum archives and undermined art institutions worldwide. The narrative feels like a cinematic thriller, but it's all true.

What did we miss? Leave us your recommendations in the comments!