Film fanatics don’t need an excuse to re-watch classic films, some of them over and over again across the decades from when we first encountered them. But if you’re a critic, one reason you do it is to check back on the touchstone films of a genre, the movies you consider benchmark Westerns, film noirs, romances, rom-coms, combat pictures and the like, the movies you measure every film against.

“Heist,” “The Score” and “Heat” have long been the yardsticks I’ve measured “heist” thrillers against. I have particular affection for 2001’s “Heist” because it’s David Mamet‘s take on the genre.

It’s as Mamet-esque as anything the celebrated playwright ever concocted for the screen — convoluted, complex, biting, bitter and layered with the repetitive, poetic and profane tough-guy/tough-gal dialogue that became Mamet’s trademark.

“Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.“

“Is he going to be cool?” “My motherf—-r is so cool, when he goes to bed, sheep count him.“

“She could talk her way out of a sunburn.”

The Mamet machismo, the blunt Mamet Darwinian “truth” telling, the Mamet sexism and misogny, the Mamet love of the sound of his own deep (ish) words — all the stuff that got this increasingly unhinged “thinker” canceled, is in the dialogue in this ornate thriller, a late career highlight for the great Gene Hackman and an early jewel in Sam Rockwell‘s acting crown.

Hackman plays Joe Moore, grizzled leader of a small but skilled crew that includes Bobby (Delroy Lindo), Pinky (Mamet regular, the magician/actor Ricky Jay) and Mrs. Moore, Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon, Mrs. Mamet), aka “The girl.”

“What’s the girl do?”

“The girl gets us in the door.”

“Gets us in the door ‘How?'”

She “gets us in the door.”

A “perfect” jewelry store heist goes just wrong enough when one employee doesn’t drink the coffee that Fran — as a waitress — drugged, and forces Joe to enter the premises without a mask. He can’t get to the CCTV system and swipe the tape.

So much for “one last job” before sailing south into the Caribbean. Their mob go-between (Danny DeVito in RARE form) figures that gives him an excuse to screw them over.

“You screw me on Wednesday, you screw me on Friday,” Joe barks. “I gotta go, I got my picture on a cereal box.”

That leverage forces the crew to do “the Swiss job” that mob-made Bergman has in mind. And take along “my boy” (Rockwell), sort of as security.

So now Jimmy, a mouthy, careless and dangerous punk, is in “the crew,” asking questions, keeping an eye on his uncle’s investment, pitching in to steal Swiss gold. His favorite questions are about one person in particular.

How do you spell trouble? “G.I.R.L.”

Mamet mocks the “plan the heist” conventions via Jimmy, the punk. Try to illustrate the moves they makd with toy cars on a makeshift map? Mamet wants to know who, outside of heist movies, ever does that? Crooks are rarely smart and generally not all that meticulous.

Steps in the process are under-explained. How’s the uniformed airport security guard (Patti Lupone) figure into this? This “tow-truck” they keep calling and timing?

The characters are straight-up “types,” with little twists. Joe is “old,” we’re constantly-reminded. And “smart.” But so is Bobby, who might ordinarily be cast as “the muscle.” Pinky would seem to be a tech whiz, conjurerer of misdirections and distractions.

“The girl” is ruthless, mercenary, more than ready to “suit up” (short dresses, cleavage) for her much-older husband when he asks her to. What that might entail is anybody’s guess.

The plot leans on that hoariest of heist picture tropes — the omnipotent, all-seeing, all-knowing leader. Joe is so many moves ahead in this chess game of double and triple crosses that even when he seems to have misjudged his rivals and taken a beating or a bullet, we wonder if he anticipated even that.

The “professionalism” of almost one and all is admired, the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance of criminal goons trotted out and skated over.

Why do creeps who wrong you figure they get to play the offended party when you fight back?

And the dialogue gets to be a bit much, florid and feral, even though that’s what we come to Mamet plays and Mamet pictures for, the iambic pentameter of the profane.

 “Never liked the Swiss. They make them little clocks, these two c–ksuckers come out of ’em with these little hammers, hit each other on the head. What kind of sick mentality is that?”

But as heist pictures go, “Heist” is still a benchmark — tough, unsentimental, stacatto and satisfying.

Its problematic creator was always controversial, with little red flags littering his theatrical outspokenness long before his works were turned into movies. He’s long flirted with contrarian conservative extremist, so nobody should be shocked at how he curdled into a Dennis Prager-quoting fascist in his dotage, with only Fox News anchors and a Jewish apologist sticking up for him.

He was mostly forgotten by Hollywood after the ill-considered “Redbelt” 15 years ago.

But “Heist” still stings and still ticks over like a fine-you-know-what watch, a genre defining work of art even if we have to hold the artist at a sort of Woody Allen-arms length in his last years.

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ricky Jay, Patti Lupone and Danny DeVito.

Credits: Scripted and directed by David Mamet. A Warner Bros.

Running time: 1:49