4. Dalton Russell (Inside Man)
Universal Pictures The protagonist of 2006's Spike Lee thriller Inside Man, Dalton Russell is one of the unsung masterminds of film. He and his gang march into a bank and take it over. When the police arrive, they are outwitted and mystified by Dalton's actions at every turn: he dresses all the hostages up like him and his gang (see the image above) and even deftly inserts members of his crew into the hostage pool. Come escape time, everyone marches out of the bank and they all look the same. The police do not know who to slap the cuffs on and the only member of the gang they've identified, Dalton himself, has vanished into thin air. This is the most brilliant part of the plan: whilst inside, the gang simply built a wall in one of the storage room behind a shelf and in the small chamber they had created, Dalton had hidden for days until everything had blown over before knocking the wall down and strolling right out. Like Thomas Crown, his motivations aren't your standard criminal fare. Dalton's entire plan was put together to steal from a single deposit box containing evidence that the bank's chairman did business with those rotten Nazis. And as we all know, any crime is perfectly legitimized if you're screwing over Nazis whilst you do it.