The Asphalt Jungle screens February 16, as part of Noir City 2017 (Feb 16-22 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian).

The Asphalt Jungle screens February 16, as part of Noir City 2017 (Feb 16-22 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian).

The Asphalt Jungle screens February 16, as part of Noir City 2017 (Feb 16-22 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian).

Throughout the years of Noir City’s Seattle residency, the programming has taken brief detours from the mean streets of hardcore noir to explore side alleys, from early influences on noir to noir influences on other genres. The 2017 festival, the biggest to date (20 films in seven days), takes more leeway than usual for “The Big Knockover,” a week of capers, heists, and holdups. A lot of the films don’t qualify as pure noir. The heist genre occupies its own corner of the crime movie universe, sometimes embracing the dark heart of film noir’s world of corruption and desperation and doom, just as often skipping into lighthearted crime comedy or slipping into cool, calculated caper spectacle. You could say that the heist film is the original antihero team endeavor, the supervillain squad combining their unique skills to a common cause—in this case, the impossible robbery. This is one of those times when we root for the bad guys.