Film

Loot

Name: Loot
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Released: 1970
Cast: Richard Attenborough, Lee Remick, Hywel Bennett, Milo O'Shea, Roy Holder

Other titles called Loot: the 2022 series (Apple TV).

Joe Orton's blackly comic caper about two bank robbers stashing their haul in a corpse's coffin, then watching it ricochet through a dysfunctional family funeral. Absurdist British farce with a criminal edge—witty, nasty, and genuinely anarchic. For people who find transgression funny and conventional morality hilarious.

TMDb rating

2.9

If you liked this

Kind Hearts and Coronets1949

Ealing's masterpiece of polite murder and inheritance scheming. Alec Guinness plays eight roles in a film that proves you can be clever and utterly cruel without breaking character or raising your voice.

But It's seventy-five years old and the pacing assumes patience. The darkness is subtle, which means you have to work to find it funny.

In the Loop2009

Armando Iannucci's profanely brilliant film about political incompetence spiralling into war. The dialogue crackles with obscene precision and every character deserves their comeuppance.

But The swearing is so relentless and specific that it can numb you. The satire requires you to recognize what's being mocked or it just feels mean.

Withnail & I1987

Two unemployed actors trash a cottage and accidentally stumble through misadventure. Quotable to exhaustion, genuinely heartfelt beneath the chaos, and utterly confident in its own strangeness.

But It's cheerfully plotless. If you need narrative momentum or character arcs, you'll feel like you're watching someone else's in-joke for ninety minutes.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Loot

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Killing1956

Both trap smart criminals in situations where theft and corpses intersect with family dysfunction. Both use absurdity not as escapism but as the surest way to reveal character.

Kubrick's debut: a racetrack heist told in fractured chronology with gallows humour and fatal human weakness. It's structured like a comedy of errors but plays like tragedy—the criminals are funny because they're doomed.

But The technical ambition sometimes overshadows the story. It's cold and punishing in ways early Kubrick always was, which reads as deliberately distant.

The Italian Job1969

Michael Caine leads a gleeful heist through Turin with charm, style, and a Mini Cooper. It's the blueprint for fun crime cinema—smart enough to respect your intelligence without asking too much of it.

But The 1960s sensibility is thick throughout. The casual sexism and dated production design won't bother everyone, but they're very much there.

The Ladykillers1955

Ealing's endgame: criminals pose as musicians to rob a bank, then get systematically undone by a landlady and their own incompetence. Every frame sings with British comic timing.

But Paced like a stage play. Modern audiences sometimes find it too theatrical or too polite to be as funny as it clearly thinks it is.

Rififi1955

Jules Dassin's heist film with almost no dialogue during its famous jewel-theft sequence—tense, elegant, and proof that you don't need words to make crime exciting and beautiful.

But It's a genuine crime film, not a comedy. Long stretches are noir-serious, which undercuts the playfulness Orton reaches for in Loot.

A Fish Called Wanda1988

Crime, flirtation, and slapstick collide when thieves and their grifting partners descend into mutual betrayal. John Cleese and Kevin Kline are magnificent, and the violence is genuinely shocking.

But It's trying very hard to be funny about everything, which sometimes means the tone feels scattered. The sexual politics are messy by design but might read as confused.

Get Carter1971

Michael Caine as a criminal returning home for bloody revenge. Gritty, violent, and utterly unsentimental—a masterclass in how to make a thriller that doesn't flinch or apologize.

But It's entirely without humour. After Loot's anarchic comedy, this will feel cold and bleak, which is partly the point but might feel like punishment.

Sexy Beast2001

Ben Kingsley as a terrifying crime boss disrupting an ex-criminal's peaceful retirement in Spain. Visually startling and genuinely nasty, with a performance that's absolutely unhinged.

But It's pretentious in its execution and the violence is meant to disturb. It takes itself seriously in ways Loot deliberately avoids.

Eating Raoul1982

Both are 101 minutes of anarchic British and American cinema using murder and money as the engine for farce. Both treat amorality as comedy's truest fuel.

A prudish married couple accidentally kill a sex worker, then discover a profitable business disposing of swingers. Transgressive, deadpan, and hilarious about the contradictions between bourgeois morality and actual greed.

But It's genuinely grotesque. The humour derives from people doing genuinely appalling things with straight faces, which can feel uncomfortably close to endorsement if you're not on its wavelength.

Kes1970

Both reject sentimentality about British life and institutions. Loot laughs at the system's corruption; Kes shows its cruelty. Both trust the audience to see through the surface.

Ken Loach's film about a working-class boy and a trained hawk, shot in gritty Northern realism. It sounds sentimental; it's actually a precise dissection of how institutions crush individual grace. Filmed the same year as Loot, a universe away in register but equally uncompromising.

But There's no comedy here. It's beautiful and devastating and will leave you quiet. If you want catharsis through laughter, this offers catharsis through empathy, which feels different and harder.