Money Heist is a Spanish TV series created by Alex Pina with the original title “La Casa de Papel” (“The Paper House” in Spanish). The crime drama series was aired on the Spanish network Antenna 3 then was worldwide released by Netflix a few months later.

Initially, Money Heist was planned to be a limited series of only 2 seasons, which would revolve around the robbery of the Royal Mint of Spain but Netflix convinced Alex Pina to produce more new sequels due to its international success on streaming platforms.

Money Heist was even awarded for the Best Drama Series at the prestigious 46th International Emmy Awards held in 2018.

The Story

This Netflix series takes an overused plot and spins a unique story from its common thread. A genius, named Professor, contracts eight people with nothing to lose and enfolds them into a plan to occupy the Royal Mint of Spain, kidnap a couple of dozen citizens, and print hundreds of millions of dollars and in lieu of keeping everyone’s identities a secret, the newly contracted bank robbers are named after cities and told to keep all personal information to themselves. But, what’s a good drama without any conflict? And that’s what happens with Money Heist as all the robbers start suspecting the plan and internal distrust peeps in among themselves.

One misstep after another leaves eight robbers with good intentions, and an airtight plan left to adapt to all that could go wrong… and it does go wrong.

What separates Money Heist from other Heist Drama?

Not at all like numerous movies that have a “heist” subject, “Money Heist” doesn’t solve a nearly impossible puzzle with a perfect plan and experts of robbery.

Professor plans a heist that uncovers numerous deadly mistakes along its way and is preceded by a group of problematic people.

Nonetheless, it is the loopholes in Professor’s perfect plan that grips and grabs the audience’s excitement due to its realism which is unlike other Heist plans like in “Ocean’s Eleven” or “Mission Impossible”.

Professor’s Vision

Though after so many mistakes made by each member of Professor’s team throughout the heist, the gang manages to overcome them, thanks to the Professor’s genius and backup plans. The audience might feel that the plan is perfect overall but what makes it sound perfect is the realistic vision of the Professor who believes this is an imperfect plan executed by imperfect humans.

Professor’s obsession with the details took him many years to research every aspect of the heist from the police’s procedure in negotiating criminals and rescuing hostages to hostage’s psychology and behaviors in perilous situations. Each risk detected in the plan receives another plan to cover. His vision is driven by two major reasons, and those are – they have nothing to lose and the success of the heist would bring them a new life.

The Gang

Each robber sees it as his/her personal goal and some claim to kill anyone who attempts to ruin the plan. This results in internal indifference between the gang members which affects the heist and brings it down. Being locked up inside the Mint for a long time, along with the casualties caused by the resisting hostages and police, the gang learns that they have to work together in order to escape the Mint alive which happened due to indifferences created in between the gang members.

The transformation of purposes of both the robbers and the police particularly happens when each side recognizes the true strength of one another and reveals that they cannot win this fight alone.

Rules of the Heist

Professor introduces a few ground rules that are forbidden to violate during the heist such as no romantic relationship or no killing innocent. But if everything would have gone as per the plan then Heist would be too boring to even sustain for a single episode. Gang members didn’t keep everything professional as it was clearer in the way each member of the gang treats the hostages; they pretend to be a tyrant to make the hostages obey but still share empathy with them. Moscow has a heart attack after hearing his son — Denver just killed a hostage (which turns out he didn’t). He tells Denver that they are thieves, not murderers. The same unprofessionalism is revealed more significantly when other members disagree with the way Tokyo uses Russian roulette to interrogate Berlin even though they show strong fear of him as a threat to the gang.

In the end, the failure of the police in stopping the heist happens because of their own actions to cover their flaws and reserve their reputation rather than rescuing hostages.

The series uses “heist” as a theme to deliver deeper messages of human virtues. Netflix series Money Heist aims to highlight the duality of society through various scenes and metaphors in which it excels brilliantly. It leaves an impact on the audience to look deep into their own system of beliefs and their point of view on every life aspect, what is right, what is wrong.

La Casa de Papel, popularized as Money Heist is streaming on Netflix.

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