5. The Italian Job
We all know how The Italian Job the 1969 version, not the serviceable Marky Mark fronted remake ends, but hell, I'll remind you anyhow. The gang appears to have gotten to the end of their elaborate, Mini-themed gold heist unscathed to the extent that they're partying in a coach with their gold-brick haul. For a moment it really does look as if everything will come up roses, but then the coach driver loses control and the vehicle is left tottering over a precipice with the gang at one end and the gold slowly slipping toward the back. Of course, it's at this point we're left with the classic line from Michael Caine's Charlie Croker, proclaiming how he's got a good idea, and we don't ever get to see what solution he was going to pull from the ether to save both the crew and the precious bullion. It's one of cinema's great cliffhangers, and it's been bothering people for years. In fact, it bothered Britain's Royal Society Of Chemistry so much that they started a competition to see if anyone could come with a solution for Croker's conundrum and naturally, the bored and obsessive among the UK's subjects responded with gusto. After much sifting through failed solutions, they declared the winner John Godwin, a Surrey resident who proposed smashing all the windows on the bus to stabilise it, before emptying out the vehicle's fuel and having one man stabilise the front end with rocks. However, as cool a fact as this is, it doesn't detract away from the fact that Croker's crew are never getting away with that gold. Why's that? It's simple Godwin's perfect solution took a whole damn day with a calculator to figure out, showing three luxuries Croker definitely didn't have time, a calculator and a reviewing body to throw out any flawed solutions. Plus, the guy's got an understandably panicked but counterweight-integral crew operating as a wildcard if they get spooked, then everything's going to hell even if Croker does beat the astronomical odds and pull out a solution. So I'm afraid to say it, but we just might have to say Croker's going to the bottom of that precipice, or at least his gold is.