Don't most of us ever wanted to be a bank robber?

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You mean you can foresee consequences like death or long-term slam time? It means you have a brain.

The typical armed robbery nets $2,000 and loads of hard time. The typical computer-based heist nets $20K and a couple years in the pokey, ‘cause computers are not classified as deadly weapons, though they should be.

What kind of an idiot sticks up a convenience store?

It is interesting that, in the 60's heading into the 70's, there were a spate of American "bank robber hero" films -- or at least "bank robber anti-hero" films.

Because indeed, bank robbers invariably terrify the "regular citizens"(men, women, and children alike) whom they round up to rob a bank.

In real life in the 70's a group of "revolutionaries" who had kidnapped Patty Hearst robbed a number of banks. But at one of them, there was a middle-aged mother in line to drop off money from her church. One of the robbers' shotguns went off and the mother was killed. THAT's what can happen in a bank robbery(Patty Hearst wasn't there for that heist.)

"Bonnie and Clyde"(1967) was big hit about bank robbers -- a romantic man and woman. "Butch Cassidy" was an even bigger hit about bank robbers -- two men(buddies in platonic love.)

Came the 70's, we had "The Getaway(Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw as husband and wife bank robbers) and Charley Varrick(Walter Matthau, in a straight role, as a bank robber whose wife helps HIM.)

Interestingly, these bank robber movies had their share of innocent victims. In Bonnie and Clyde, Clyde shoots an old bank clerk point blank in the face. In Charley Varrick, a bank robbery gone bad is a virtual slaughter -- one cop is killed, one is probably killed, a security guard is killed, a male gang member is killed -- and Matthau's WIFE is killed. (This was one helluva Walter Matthau movie!)

Also, in Butch Cassidy, though it is treated as comedy, Butch and Sundance keep blowing up that loyal train employee(George Furth) in different train robberies, until he is in an arm sling with a black eye -- the final dynamite blast just MIGHT have killed him; we never see.

The movies treated their bank robbers differently. Both Bonnie and Clyde and Butch and Sundance die in a fusillade of bullets(we see it with B and C; we don't with Butch and Sundance.) But in both The Getaway and Charley Varrick, the robbers get away at the end(well, the survivor in Charley Varrick.)

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