13 Movies Where Characters Take The Money And Run, Ranked

Sam Raimi expertly adapted Scott Smith's riveting novel A Simple Plan in 1998. Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton), his pregnant wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda), and his mentally challenged brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) are looking for a runaway dog in the snowy woods when they come across a small plane that has crashed. Rummaging through the wreckage, they find a bag with $4 million inside. There's some disagreement over whether to keep it or turn it in to the police. That's when they hatch the plan of the title. They will hold the money until spring comes. At that point, the snow will melt and the plane will probably be found. If no one realizes the money is missing, they'll split it three ways. If someone does, they'll burn it and play dumb. Although it sounds straightforward, paranoia sets in among the trio, Hank kills someone in fear that their ruse will be uncovered, and fractures form in the alliance. A Simple Plan has a delicious irony at the end. After going through all this drama, including slaying Jacob, Hank is informed by the FBI that the cash was ransom money and all the serial numbers were written down. Anyone attempting to spend any of it, including him, would immediately be caught.

In No Country for Old Men, Texas welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad. Aside from a couple bodies, there's a satchel full of money left behind at the scene. He figures that since there's no one around to see him, he might as well just grab that satchel and walk off with it. What he doesn't initially realize - and comes to find out the hard way - is that the cash belongs to Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a ruthless killer who shoots people with an air tank device of the kind that's used to put down cattle. Chigurh tracks Moss across Texas and into Mexico, trying to retrieve what's his. A trail of bodies is left in his wake. The men get close to each other several times, never quite coming face-to-face. Moss is ultimately done in by a group of Mexicans, while Chigurh gets his money back, only to be hit by a car at the end. He's last seen limping away to parts unknown. No Country for Old Men uses the "bag of cash" concept to look at the worsening face of crime. As these events are going on, a lawman (Tommy Lee Jones) is tracking Chigurh. After seeing the kind of violence he's capable of, the lawman becomes scared and decides to halt the pursuit.

The bag of cash in Black Check comes in the form of, as the title implies, a blank check. A criminal on the run hits the bike of 11-year old Preston Waters (Brian Bonsall). He just stole a ton of money and is consequently in a hurry to keep moving. In a haste to compensate for the damages, he hands the kid a signed blank check. Preston fills it out for a million bucks and cashes it. Now flush with cash, the savvy young child buys a ton of toys and a house. He even hires a chauffeur. The thief and his associates come looking for the money, putting Preston in danger. This is a family film, though, so of course the FBI shows up to arrest them before they become too big of a threat to him. Going through this incident causes Preston's investor father to realize he'd previously been too hard on his son. Their relationship improves as a result, and Preston learns that having a loving, supportive family is way more important than having a lot of money.

Shallow Grave tells the story of three friends - David (Christopher Eccleston), Juliet (Kerry Fox), and Alex (Ewan McGregor). Their new roommate Hugo unexpectedly dies of an overdose. They discover his corpse and a stash of money next to it. After some debate, the trio decides to keep the money for themselves and get rid of Hugo's body. The plan seems foolproof. What they don't know, however, is that some bad men are looking for Hugo because of that cash. The cops are poking around, too. This creates overwhelming paranoia among the friends, and the desire to keep the money causes their relationships to fracture in various ways. Juliet and Alex do away with David, then Juliet tries to kill Alex before rushing off to the airport with the dough. To her surprise, she opens the case and finds not money, but newspaper clippings. Alex has foiled her. He hid the money under the floorboards. Shallow Grave is all about how money can corrupt even the tightest of friendships, turning people against each other in their state of greed.

Money for Nothing is a unique "bag of money" movie because it's based on a true story. John Cusack stars as Joey Coyle, a Philadelphia longshoreman. He finds a cart containing $1.2 million that fell out of an armored car. Given that he's in somewhat dire financial straits, he takes a "finders keepers" approach, taking the stacks of bills home with him. Joey is, however, not exactly the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Realizing that the money can probably be traced, he turns to a local mobster to help him launder it. His careless ways also attract the attention of a cop, Detective Pat Laurenzi (Michael Madsen), who begins looking into the situation. That becomes easier as Joey takes increasingly desperate and sloppy measures to hide his guilt. Laurenzi eventually captures Joey as he tries to flee with the money at the airport. The point of the darkly funny Money for Nothing is that not even a million dollars is enough to purchase intelligence.

Harry (Jeff Daniels) and Lloyd (Jim Carrey) are, well, dumb. The heroes of Dumb and Dumber make a trek from Rhode Island to Colorado after limo driver Lloyd's crush, Mary (Lauren Holly), leaves a briefcase full of money at the airport. He wants to return it to her and hopefully win her heart in the process. He is clueless to the fact that she left it there on purpose. It's ransom money for the men who kidnapped her husband. Lloyd and Harry's journey across the country is full of mishaps, including a run-in with the kidnappers. Once arriving in Aspen, they spend all the money on necessities - and some items that are not so necessary, such as pastel-colored tuxedos - and put IOUs in the briefcase. Ultimately, the FBI comes in and arrests all the bad guys, Mary is reunited with her husband, to Lloyd's dismay, and our heroes start heading back home. The clever thing about Dumb and Dumber is how it puts a wacky twist on the idea of finding money. The cash was never lost - Lloyd just thought it was.

In Cold Comes the Night, Alice Eve plays Chloe, the manager of a cheap motel where drug deals occur frequently and rooms are rented by the hour. Her life changes when a blind man named Topo (Bryan Cranston) arrives at the motel. He's lost a bag full of money and needs someone to be his eyes as he attempts to find it, then make his way across the Canadian border. Of course, Topo takes Chloe hostage, forcing her to help. Chloe is a single mom who desperately needs to find better living conditions for her young daughter than the seedy motel can provide. She realizes that, if she can help the blind man find the money, she just might be able to swipe it away from him. After many convoluted and violent events, some of which involve a crooked cop (Logan Marshall-Green) whom Chloe is semi-romantically involved with, she manages to skim $50,000. The movie ends with her whisking her daughter away to a presumably better life somewhere else.

Directed by the late Harold Ramis, The Ice Harvest tells the story of mob lawyer Charlie Arglist (John Cusack). He's just stolen a bag containing $2 million from his boss. The plan is for him and his partner Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) to get out of town with the money, never to be heard from again. However, their final night in the city is marred by a treacherous ice storm that makes escape difficult, at best. A second hitch is the arrival of a mobster named Roy (Mike Starr) who may be wise to their plan. Stuff gets even darker from there, with Charlie coming to realize that Vic was planning to do away with him and take the money for himself. Appropriately, given the title, Vic ends up freezing to death after falling into a frozen lake. That leaves Charlie with the cash. The film ends with him finally driving out of town. Viewers are left with the impression that his life would have been much easier had he never bothered with the theft in the first place. Two million bucks wasn't worth all the trouble he's been through.

White Sands falls under the category of "movies you probably forgot existed." This 1992 drama is about Ray Dolezal (Willem Dafoe), the sheriff of a small New Mexico town. One day, he discovers a corpse, and the hand of the deceased is holding on to a briefcase. Inside is half a million bucks. To figure out who committed the crime, Dolezal assumes the dead man's identity and calls a phone number found in his stomach during the autopsy. This leads to him being robbed of the cash by the people he meets. From there, he ends up smack in the middle of an FBI sting to nab a couple of gun runners. The agent in charge, Greg Meeker (Samuel L. Jackson), encourages Dolezal to continue the impersonation in order to help. All sorts of danger arise the further into things he gets, thanks to double-crosses and people who are not what they seem. The whole convoluted mess concludes in the desert - hence the title - where he leaves the cash, which he's been accused of stealing and has now retrieved, and runs off into the sand, presumably wishing he'd never found it in the first place.

Danny Boyle's Millions is a fun entry in the category because the protagonist is a child. A 9-year-old named Damian (Alex Etel) discovers a bag of money that has been flung from a passing train. He and brother Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon) do what most kids would do in this situation - they decide to hide the discovery from their parents. Damian, who was raised as a Christian, assumes the money has been sent from God and therefore attempts to use it to perform good acts. Of course, the money thrown off the train was supposed to be picked up by robbers, and they come looking for it, ransacking the family's house in the process. By this point, he has to clue his father in on what happened. Damian eventually decides the money is doing more harm than good, so he burns what's left of it, minus the small amounts each of his family members put aside to do a couple more benevolent works. Millions is, at heart, a story about a kid learning that money really can be the root of all evil when it's in the wrong hands. When it's in the right hands, it can make the world a tiny bit better.

Funny Money stars Chevy Chase as Henry Perkins, an executive at a struggling wax fruit company. On his way home from work one night, he accidentally picks up the wrong briefcase on the subway. He gets home, opens it up, and discovers $5 million in cash inside. Henry suggests to his wife Carol (Penelope Ann Miller) that they take it and flee to Barcelona, especially since the Mafioso-looking guy to whom it belongs will probably come looking for it. That idea is foiled by the fact that Carol has already planned a birthday party for him that same night. Once their guests start showing up, there's no running away. This 2006 comedy, based on a stage play by Ray Cooney, is a farce. Henry and Carol constantly have to lie in order to prevent a couple of meddling cops from discovering what's going on. Their friends are eventually drawn into the shenanigans, as well, as is a cab driver. After plenty of awkward encounters with both the police and the money's rightful owner - who does indeed come knocking - Henry returns the briefcase. Soon after, he finds out the cabbie removed the money from it. Henry and Carol are now rich. No more wax fruit for him.

Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise is one of the seminal independent films of the 1980s. John Lurie plays Willie, a gambler living in a cramped New York City apartment. His Hungarian cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) comes to stay with him temporarily before moving in with their aunt in Ohio. A year later, Willie and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson) leave the gloominess of their lives in NYC to visit her in Cleveland. Depressed by the conditions there, which aren't much different than what they just left, the trio decides to escape to Florida. But because they lack money, they can't afford anywhere nice, so they're stuck in a dingy motel room in a less-than-glamorous part of the state. Close to the film's end, Willie and Eddie are broke after losing most of their money at the dog track. Eva, declining to gamble with them, goes to the beach instead. She encounters a drug dealer who, because of the large hat she's wearing, mistakes her for a courier and hands her an envelope stuffed with money. She leaves a little bit in the room for the guys, then heads to the airport, where she intends to fly home to Budapest. She opts not to go at the last minute, but Willie, believing she's left, buys a ticket and does make the trek. Stranger Than Paradise concludes with her returning to the motel room. The theme of Stranger Than Paradise is best summed up by a line of dialogue Eddie delivers: "You come to someplace new and everything just looks the same." Even with a bit of cash, Eva realizes that nothing will change for her significantly.

In Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, four vets - Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Melvin (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), and Eddie (Norm Lewis) - return to Vietnam to bring home the remains of their fallen leader, Stormin' Norman (Chadwick Boseman). They also have a second goal, namely to retrieve a case full of US gold that they discovered in a crashed military airplane and subsequently buried. Getting back to the location takes some effort. Their mission is made harder by the fact that they aren't the only ones looking for that gold. With that setup in place, Da 5 Bloods cranks up the tension as the men face a series of unexpected perils. One of them even steps on a landmine and is blown to pieces. Nevertheless, they persist, ultimately finding the gold, which the surviving guys then use to fund racial justice programs and charities back in the United States. In putting the characters on a quest for buried loot, Lee is able to comment on the significant role of African-American soldiers in the Vietnam War, as well as the overall lack of credit they received. By going back to the country, Paul and crew are essentially at war for a second time, forced to come to terms with their experiences there.