This week, director Tony Scott pits a New York City Transit officer (Denzel Washington) against a cryptic, train-stealing criminal (John Travolta) in an update of the 1974 heist flick The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. It's a close remake of the original with a modern spin that asks, how could a gang of armed men steal a subway car in the age of the Internet? With that in mind, we take a look back at the long and colorful history of the heist film -- generally speaking, movies featuring intricate plots to steal something, be it money, diamonds, or entire modes of transportation -- to revisit ten decades of heists and capers on celluloid.

Below, we name one influential heist movie per decade, from The Great Train Robbery to Ocean's 11 and everything in between; chime in with your favorites!

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1900s-1910s: The Great Train Robbery (1903)

The Great Train Robbery (1903) didn't just lay the groundwork for heist films; it changed the way that moviemakers told stories. Edwin S. Porter's landmark 12-minute short was one of the first narrative films, and it utilized some groundbreaking cinematic techniques (cross-cutting, non-static camerawork) to tell the tale of a railway heist and its bloody aftermath. Though the film begins with the villains undertaking the job, it's clear from their actions that they've done their homework, executing the heist with cold, occasionally murderous discipline. The Great Train Robbery is one of the most influential films ever made, and its iconic final shot -- that of a man firing a gun directly at the camera -- has been emulated in countless films, perhaps most memorably in the final scene of Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas.

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1920s: The Unholy Three (1925)

What's a heist movie without a colorful band of crooks? Tod Browning's The Unholy Three (1925, and remade as a talkie in 1930) presents one of the weirdest criminal plots ever committed to celluloid, in which a quartet of carnival freaks trick marks into buying "talking" parrots from their pet store by using ventriloquism, and then burglarize their homes when they inquire as to why the birds aren't talking. The gang members include a ventriloquist (Lon Chaney), a little person, a strong man, and a beautiful pickpocket. Browning, who also helmed Dracula and Freaks, is best known as a horror director, but with this strange feature (which got an approving nod in Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects), he hit upon something that the makers of caper flicks would consistently exploit --- namely, that a gang of weirdos makes for a more entertaining heist flick.

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1930s: Raffles (1930)

By the 1930s, the heist on film was more a plot point than a story-spanning focus, placing more emphasis on who was doing the heisting, who was being stolen from, and the complicated and comical relationships that transpired. In the 1930 romantic thriller Raffles (nominated for the Best Oscar for Sound in the category's founding year) the titular gentleman thief known as the Amateur Cracksman trades his posh life of crime (and a prized necklace) for the love of a woman. A 1939 remake (one of many TV and screen adaptations to come) starred David Niven, who subsequently popped up as distinguished con men in The Pink Panther (1963), Bedtime Story (1964), The Brain (1969). Elsewhere during the Post-Depression era, heists were integral to dramatic crime movies where jewels rather than cash were the prime targets (15 Maiden Lane, Bulldog Jack) and desperate criminals almost always met a violent end.

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1940s: High Sierra (1941)

The first heist flick we tend to think of when remembering the 1940s is High Sierra, starring Humphrey Bogart, in which he plays Roy Earle, an expert thief charged with planning the robbery of a California casino. The requisite cast of ne'er-do-wells is gathered and the plan is executed, but when all is said and done, things begin to fall apart. As the 1940s was a defining decade for what we now know as film noir, and no one quite embodied the genre the way Humphrey Bogart did, High Sierra represents a unique entry in the heist movie genre, steeped in the cinematic culture of the day and powered by one of Hollywood's greatest screen legends.

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1950s: Rififi (1955)

Nobody made stylish heist films like the French in the 1950s. Case in point: Jules Dassin's Rififi, a dark, cynical tale of a group of thieves who meticulously plan and execute the perfect jewel heist before falling prey to human nature. Rififi perfected many of the conventions that would inform subsequent caper flicks, from the assembly of the perfect team to the inevitable fallout once the job is completed. However, its pièce de résistance remains the job itself, a wordless, virtuoso 30-minute sequence so precise and tense that it still dazzles today. Rififi inspired countless heist films, including Reservoir Dogs, Heat, and The Usual Suspects, and a remake starring Al Pacino was announced a few years back. Other 1950s heist classics include Jean-Pierre Melville's moody, influential Bob le Flambeur and John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, (both of which exerted a profound influence on the Ocean's movies), as well as Stanley Kubrick's time-jumping, fatalistic The Killing.