You gotta be a goof...
Added 10/7/2009
What they were thinking when releasing this brilliant film to dvd is beyond me. The transfer is horrible! I love Michael Mann and this will always be my fav, but this dvd transfer is horrendous and does not give the movie justice. I give the actual movie a ten, I give the dvd a one.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Thief Steals the Show
Added 9/15/2009
This is a damn cool movie. Michael Mann did himself very proud with this first film of his and the rest of his career has bourne out the promise that this film established.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Incredible performance by James Caan
Added 8/9/2009
James Caan's had an up-and-down career, but at his best he was one of the most riveting actors in film. Thief is definitely Caan at his best. Michael Mann has created an amazing character and Caan inhabits him completely. Mann fans expecting the fireworks of Heat or Miami Vice should realize coming in that this is a far more methodical character study. This is where Mann's exploration of the gray areas between "good guys" and "bad guys" really kicked off. What Thief "lacks" in conventional action it more than makes up in suspense and steadily increasing tension. And when it is time for some good old-fashioned violence to go down, Mann doesn't shy away: but he also makes the violence feel real, and really painful. While Caan is utterly fabulous, the supporting cast is just as good, especially the late Robert Prosky. The film even boasts a James Belushi performance that won't make you want to destroy your DVD player. Thief is one of my favorite films, and it's well worth checking out.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Mann on The Mark
Added 8/2/2009
Of all of the movie brats -- the first generation of film school grads to become Hollywood directors -- Michael Mann, born in 1943, was the late starter. Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, DePalma and Schrader all had established their careers by the early '70's; Thief, Mann's debut, arrived with respectful reviews, little fanfare and no commercial impact in 1981. With almost 30 years hindsight, this is the most remarkable inaugural film of all of the aforementioned careers; Mann, the arch-stylist of American cinema, sprang fully formed in Thief, with all of his thematic, aural and visual motifs leaping off the screen.
James Caan, in a tremendous performance, plays Frank, a Chicago car dealer, bar-owner, ex-con, and professional burglar. State-raised in orphanages, a youth in petty crime landed him in a 15 year stretch in prison, where he was given a crash course in violence and tutored in his craft by the one positive influence in his life, a lifer named Okla (Willie Nelson). Now in his early 40's, he plies his trade as a freelance thief of high-end jewlery, looking forward to leveraging that last sweet score into retirement, as he knows time and luck are not on his side. He carries in his wallet a collage he made in prison of children, a house, Okla, the elements of a normal life. When he meets a been-around waitress, Tuesday Weld, he grabs onto her, knowing she is the final picture missing from his life. An avuncular crime lord (Robert Prosky) muscles in gently on Frank's independence, offering him a partnership deal that could provide Frank's ticket out of the life, or else make him the indentured servant of truly loathsome people.
All of Mann's signatures are in place. He knows Frank's world backward and forward, and indeed the supporting cast consists largely of Chicago lawmen and safecrackers who were consultants on the film. The look of the movie contrasts Mann's dual background in nonfiction film and advertising-- absolute documentary vermisillitude ( the film's centerpiece is a real-time heist that makes burglary look like a particularly arduous form of blue-collar subcontracting) and high design. Mann excels at night-time prowls around the streets of Chicago, a visual symphony of rain-slicked streets, reflections off of car chrome and store windows, vertiginous architecturally-based compositions, and expressionist neon. All scored to the electronic blasts provided by Tangerine Dream, a crowning touch.
But at the center of the film is the Mann man. Frank is a pro, obessively dedicated to a job he excels at, isolated, alone, craving a normal life and knowing it is foreclosed to him. Caan comports himself with the aura of a man you don't want to mess with, but his pinched walk is the swagger of a man nursing a grievous wound. His periodic explosions of temper are less the fireworks displays of the '70's rebel figure (think Jack Nicholson) than the slightly sociopathic slippages of control on the part of a man who has meticulously ordered his life to keep his demons at bay and finds that he is not in control at all. Two heist scenes aside, their is only one scene of gunplay, coming at the film's end. This is a study of character and environment, most powerful when little in particular is happening: Caan working his legit and illegit jobs, driving through the infernal city, visiting Okla in jail, courting his woman. The most memorable scene in the film is when Caan cracks an un-crackable safe, a feat of daring, hard work, risk, and ingenuity, and then lets his crew empty the contents; he pulls off his welding mask, sits down and smokes a cigarette, an exhausted, joyless, abstracted look on his face that Mann's camera lingers on for an eternity, that is absolutely real.
Mann has since explored variations on this theme with vastly increased budgets, superstar casts, and greatly heightened technical skills. But there is a freshness and integrity and strong dose of reality in Thief that he has yet to quite touch, even in Heat, his masterpiece in the genre. All that was missing from his arsenal was his ability to stage a shoot-out -- the Peckinpah-isms are undigested and poorly staged. Mann would educate himself in spades in this department. Otherwise this is a flawless little genre gem, too often referred to as neo-noir when it feels more like Wong Kar-Wai and Kieslowski with guns -- except neither of those arty guys had made their first features yet. Mann anticipated them in his glorious meditation on urban lonliness and fate.
2 out of 3 people found this helpful.
|
great movie . top rate action packed. A true to life account of the life of a thief. Realistic portrayal that anyone that has lived life on the edge can relate. A movie that will go down as a alltime criminal movie. Like the James Cagney, Scarface with Al Pacino, Wesley Snipes in New Jack City. I recommend it in your collection. You can sit with the fellows with beers and chips watch. go to www.streetexchangerate.com
www.streetexchangerate.com www.streetexchangerate.com www.streetexchangerate.com
0 out of 2 people found this helpful.
|
