The Mastermind

'Doc' Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) is a legendary crime 'mastermind'. He has just been released from prison. He has a new scheme for a million-dollar burglary. He enlists safecracker Louis (Anthony Caruso), reinforcer Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), experienced driver Gus (recognize James Whitmore) and financial backing by Emmerich (Louis Calhern). Staffing is a problem for legitimate business as well as the nefarious types and a smooth heist becomes fraught with an accumulation of errors that spiral out of control. What the viewer sees is a masterpiece of the "noir" genre with subtle reference to a disaffected urban underground community.

In 1950, a Brink's armored truck in Boston was robbed by a highly organized gang decked out in Halloween masks. The Brink's Job is an occasionally humorous account of that "perfect crime." Peter Falk stars as the mastermind behind the robbery, who assembles a bunch of two-bit hoods who in any other circumstance would be written off as born losers. The success of the caper hinges upon Brink's rather arrogant assumption that its trucks are unassailable and their guards are always on their toes. Wrong on both counts! This comic suspenser was based on The Big Stick Up at Brink's, a book by Noel Behn.

Locked away in an asylum for a decade and teetering between life and death, the criminal mastermind Doctor Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) has scribbled his last will and testament: a manifesto establishing a future empire of crime. When the document’s nefarious writings start leading to terrifying parallels in reality, it’s up to Berlin’s star detective, Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke, reprising his role from M) to connect the most fragmented, maddening clues in a case unlike any other. A sequel to his enormously successful silent film Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse reunites the director with the character that had effectively launched his career. Lang put slogans and ideas expounded by the Nazis into the mouth of a madman, warning his audience of an imminent menace, which was soon to become a reality…..

"A symbol of Nazi cruelty and a master of cynical propaganda, Joseph Goebbels was the mastermind behind Adolf Hitler's disturbing success. Goebbels, called the "genius of spin" and the "Reich-Liar-General," was a complicated man whose attitudes fluctuated between extremes of self-pity and grandiose excess. This American Experience program, produced by Lutz Hachmeister and Michael Kloft, shows how Goebbels constantly reinvented himself through the years of his greatest success, and allows the man to speak for himself through the diaries he kept. Actor Kenneth Branagh reads the diary excerpts, revealing a chilling personality whose words justified racism, the Holocaust, and total war.

Brothers - older Stephen and three years junior Bloom - have been con artists since they were kids. Stephen is the mastermind, for who the intricacy of the story used in the con is as important as the positive outcome of the swindle. Bloom is the main character of Stephen's stories, the character he considers the anti-hero. As adults, they travel the world and never enlist the same people twice in their cons, except for their consistent sidekick, the mysterious and primarily silent Bang Bang, a Japanese woman who just appeared in their lives one day and who has a penchant for blowing things up. As Bloom hits his mid-thirties, he wants to quit the business as he is losing his own identity to that of the characters he portrays; he doesn't know anymore what is real and what is make-believe. Stephen talks him into one last con, the mark to be the eccentric, lonely but beautiful New Jersey heiress…

Armed men hijack a New York City subway train, holding the passengers hostage in return for a ransom, and turning an ordinary day's work for dispatcher Walter Garber into a face-off with the mastermind behind the crime.

A jewel thief (Norma Shearer) posing as a rich widow corners British aristocrats at a country mansion.

In order to let things cool down from their latest heist, Popeye and his group of thieves go to Macau on a job. But the mastermind behind this job is none other than Popeye's old partner Macau Park, who escaped with 68kg of gold several years ago on their last job together. Macau Park brought Chinese thieves as well but little did they know what Macau Park planned for each one of them. His plan takes an unexpected turn when Popeye brings Pepsi, a genius safe-cracker and old flame of Macau Park, to settle the old score. The thieves' target is a $20 million diamond known as 'Tear of the Sun', kept safely away in a casino, brought there to be sold by a notorious Chinese fence. While working together to steal this fabled diamond, they all have their own agenda to keep the diamond for themselves. But who will succeed and live to see another day?