heist movie concept: a bunch of jews get together and steal back torah scrolls from rich evangelicals
OKAY BUT YOU CAN’T JUST SAY THIS
Team of five, yes? Gal Gadot as the poser (“I’ve heard you have some….antiquities…..I might be interested in buying”), Daveed Diggs as the master strategist, Dan Radcliffe and Zooey Deschanel as the crack team, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as tech support.
Meryl Streep is their goyische informant and intelligence collector. Her brother, a megachurch pastor, is their first target and as she puts it, “it’s all smoke and communion wafers.” He’s a massive fraud and she can’t wait to see him get his, and refers semi-routinely to immigrants having to leave everything behind.
Toward the end of the film, Gordon-Levitt’s character looks at her and says “so….Kane, huh?” She just gives him a weird look and he says “or was it Cohen when you guys came through Ellis Island?” Turns out her family decided to assimilate and hide their Jewish roots a few generations back, but she’s still pissed about the things that made that necessary. By Jewish law, she’s a gentile, but her ancestry is Jewish.
The movie ends with Zooey Deschanel being like “so now what do we do? There are thousands of stolen antiquities out there, this was just one tiny theft ring” and all of them looking at each other before Daveed Diggs goes “so…..the Vatican?” and they all look at Meryl Streep who shrugs and says “I might know someone” and they all kind of look at each other again grinning and nodding this time.
Cut to black, SEE US IN THE SEQUEL.
Make it a team of ten so it’s a minyan.
This is an excellent point. I will endeavor to fill out the team, but must first pause to state that at some point someone must say….no, wait. I’ll introduce that below.
David Arquette is the older member of the team, not quite what you’d call “washed up,” but he’s had a string of heists gone wrong. Meryl is actually the one who insists on him being part of the team and it’s because before a bad marriage kind of turned him into a schlub, he was a highly-respected professor of antiquities; his expertise will be necessary to safely remove these artifacts and scrolls, and this is a shot at redemption after angrily turning away from his faith post-bad-marriage.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is the coordinator for this happy band, making sure all the moving parts work together. Call her a secretary, and Gal Gadot will ensure you don’t have to die to regret your words.
Idina Menzel is Gal Gadot’s wife. They work together. To their marks, it seems like Gal is the looks and Idina is the money. In reality they’re both of upper-middle-class means at best and smart as fuck (and damned fine, are we kidding?)
Joaquin Phoenix is the guy who put them all up to this. He has the connections and the actual money (earned a little at a time, tokens of gratitude for other heists he’s pulled off, Leverage-style). He’s the one getting these items back where they belong.
And finally….
Noah Schnapp as the angry teen who has no idea where Judaism is supposed to fit in the modern world. He’s a foster kid being raised by a pair of well-meaning gentiles who nonetheless are of the “it’s a religion, not a culture” mentality and have left him cut off from his history. In looking for backup tech support, Joseph Gordon-Levitt set up an online hacking puzzle that was supposed to be near-impossible to solve. Somehow, Noah solved it in about fifteen minutes flat.
He sees that he’s in a room full of people who are in their 30s and older and rather bitterly goes “I guess I’m just the gopher minion, huh?”
To which Daveed Diggs replies (I have been waiting ALL POST for this): “there’s no minion in a minyan, kid. You’re the apprentice. And maybe just a little better than Joe here. Not that he’d admit it, mind you.”
It’s like National Treasure had a baby with Ocean’s 11 and were both Jewish the whole time.
YES PLEASE



















