![]() There’s an amazing sequence where he’s been getting things in place for a big score and it’s about ready to go and then all the sudden some cops are waiting for him. ![]() But it also brings all this bullshit he never had to deal with before, like all the sudden all the crooked cops in town are all over his ass shaking him down for a cut of his take on a job he hasn’t even done yet.Īnybody else would learn to play the game, give the cops some money so they leave him alone. It has its advantages (the guy says he’ll look out for him, and proves it by hooking him up for an illegal adoption). So he takes the kind of offer he’s intentionally avoided all these years, a job with an organized crime guy (Robert Prosky, LAST ACTION HERO, in his first movie). But he’s the kind of guy that gets what he wants. He hasn’t even told her what he does yet. It seems more like a wife is something he wants to put on his trophy shelf than that he actually cares about her. Trust, me, if Frank has any fucks, he’s never gonna give ’em.īut there’s this waitress that he likes, Jessie, and he has a vision of settling down and having a family. He loses some diamonds when his fence gets killed for skimming from the mob, so he finds out who’s responsible, walks right into the front company, past all the secretaries, into the guy’s office and threatens him. So he’s kind of a bigger player than my favorite fictional thief Parker, but he has a similar sort of brazen stubbornness. He owns a used car lot as a cover and a bar as a phone service. He’s a veteran Chicago safecracker who works with a few guys he trusts, like his partner Barry (Jim Belushi, no shit, in his first major role). But of course this one is about the thief, James Caan as Frank. But that’s a character, believe it or not, with more heart.Ī getaway driver is actually the first guy we see in the movie. Its closest modern equivalent is DRIVE, which at times plays as an homage or ripoff of THIEF. But also it has plenty of moments of badassness, not shirking its duty to deliver on the genre goods. ![]() It’s a movie that’s low on exposition, high on uncomfortable moments where we aren’t expected to agree with the protagonist (like the aggressive way he courts Jessie, and then the heartless way he cuts her off, treating her as a property that’s been tying him down). They’re just very professional about it and perform their jobs well. It opens with a 10 minute heist sequence where everything goes right. Not even really a code of honor, just a self-serving code of independence, but one that we can loosely apply to more ethical aspects of our own lives.īy today’s standards it’s an arty movie, full of long, quiet scenes, not a bunch of noises to tell you it’s exciting. It matter-of-factly drops us into a gritty underworld, makes us feel like we’re witnessing the real deal, and puts us on the side of a guy who has no business being the good guy except that he lives by more of a code than the other guys do. It’s moody, atmospheric and macho as hell. THIEF is a pure dose of most of what I love about Michael Mann. ![]()
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