There are directors who’d give their right eye to make a film as gorgeous-looking as this. Some of them might further give their left eye to be able to make a film this great at the same time. In his first theatrical feature (he made a TV movie before this), director Michael Mann is one motherfucking genius of a filmmaker, as well as a sharp observer, a ruthless storyteller and a poet with lights and backgrounds. Mann’s a next-level stylist who also provides that substance that we’re always hearing about.
“Style over substance”. It’s a common piece of criticism that I tend to not use. Sometimes the style IS the substance. Sometimes my eyes are so fatigued from modern movies, where interesting imagery is often handed directly to the computer nerd department and the idea of a director as a visual artist who knows exactly what they want right there on the set and then works for a year to achieve it directly through the camera lens seems almost outdated, that I don’t even remember what “style” means anymore.
Maybe that’s my own failing. I don’t know. Whatever the case, Thief is one of those movies that can remind you of what it’s all about. It’s intense stuff. You get the feeling that Mann would go for the throat of anyone who questioned the inclusion of the tiniest light bulb on the set. Mann makes this like it’s his only chance to make anything. It’s sweaty. It’s vital. It’s sad, angry and strangely lovely. Thief does a ballet dance on your eye and then punches you in the gut while the Tangerine Dream score hangs in the air with icy Krautrock cool.
The story is one of the oldest ones around. A crook who’s been dealt more than a few bad hands in life wants to go straight. Wife and kids, lovely home, security. And its going to take one last big heist to do it. You’ve seen it all before, but not like this, all day-glo and with James Caan at the peak of his powers in the rich lead part (a real actor’s dream, with monologues and intense silent moments and plenty of things to do). He’s not just some hood. He doesn’t hurt innocent people or steal from anyone that we care about. He specializes in jewel thefts and who gives a fuck about the jewelry industry? It’s the fakest business in the world. Jewelry has no inherent worth. It’s a bunch of shiny pieces of shit that we all seem to have to decided are status symbols of the highest order. Fuck ’em. The most interesting thing you can do with jewels is steal them. Good for James Caan. I hope he steals all of ’em.
This is a crime film, but it’s not about edge-of-your-seat suspense. Mann carefully documents the procedure of safe-cracking (according to him, they built a real, usable high-security safe and then genuinely cut through it on camera for maximum accuracy in the film), with all of its metal and sparks and buzzing instruments, but we never expect the police to charge in at any moment. This movie is not about things like that. No, more than anything else, it’s a character study.
Stealing here is a job like any other. It doesn’t have a bright future and yet James Caan is stuck in it. He’s like someone who’s been waiting tables for twenty years. He’s not a bad guy or an idiot. He just never joined the mainstream. In his case, it’s because he got busted for a few too many small thefts when he was young and then spent his entire 20s behind bars. When they let him out in his 30s, he didn’t have any other skills except for how to steal. Prison was his college and seasoned thief Willie Nelson (!) was his professor. And now here he is. He doesn’t love the job, but he does the job. He does it well, too. The squares in the regular world don’t want him, but a fatcat crime boss (DEEE-liciously played by character-actor great Robert Prosky) does.
And I don’t know, maybe I’m an idiot (a real possibility), but James Caan doesn’t make a single decision here that I wouldn’t consider doing myself in his situation. He’s never unrelatable. The world around him, as shot by Mann and first-time cinematographer Donald E. Thorin, is such an otherworldly light show because that’s how he sees it. There’s a luminous harmony around him in which he, a man who works in the shadows, can never take part. That’s part of this movie’s brilliance.
It’s a film that’s relevant as long as there’s anyone out there who saw the years fly by and never joined, or got the chance to join, the rest of the crowd.