Very Cool!!!

An absolute waste of money

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Greetings from Lithuania."Thief" (1981) is a great movie. Amazingly directed by one of my all time favorite Michael Mann, this is a kinda simple story, yet amazingly told. This has to be one of the two best performances ever by James Caan ("The Godfather" comes in a first place). First feature film of Michael Mann, the ones whose movies i always liked to say the least.All in all, "Thief" is a pure movie gem. Great soundtrack, simple yet very involving story, great script and amazing work by Michael Mann - this is a one superb movie.

Personally I love Michael Mann's works, and Thief is no exception. In fact, you can see that it served as a template for his later work. A big reason Thief works so well (and probably why a few viewers will Not enjoy the film) is that it's very true to criminal life from all angles. There is no hero, there is no happy ending, there is no trust. It's every man for himself on a road to nowhere. Thanks to an amazing performance by Caan, and a great script, Thief is incredibly entertaining while being depressingly realistic. Bottom line - if you like Mann's other crime dramas, you'll love Thief!

Dear Michael Mann, thanks for making such a stylish character study of a thief with some barely hidden social commentary. A successful freelancing thief (James Caan) decides to settle down with a beautiful but tortured woman (Tuesday Weld). He also shrugs away his independence and enters what I saw as a day job - he decides to pull off a daring robbery for the mafia who would pay him a cut. The mafia even arranges a kid for the thief and his new wife as his criminal record disqualifies him from adopting children. Of course, the gentrification of the thief goes haywire. Everything about Thief indicates that the director is a man of great taste. Tangerine Dream's score bestows the film with a contemplative air. The stunning visuals are awash with blue. The locations seemed like they were carefully chosen. The slow motion action scenes and violence were stunning. The supporting cast - Willie Nelson as a dying criminal, Robert Prosky as the mafia man, Tuesday Weld as the reluctant wife and James Belushi as the sidekick were all remarkable. Apparently, Al Pacino refused this film. This might have worked in the film's favor as any film with Pacino usually ends up with him hogging the limelight. James Caan was stylish and was particularly good in the scene at the cafe when he opens his heart to Weld. He did not distract attention away from some of the other aspects of the film. Good job, Michael. Best Regards, Pimpin. (10/10)

The 1980's seemed to define what is to be expected of a crime movie. It was an era of machine guns, tooth-picks and body oil, with little attention paid to the all-important details. Michael Mann's Thief was an ultra-slick, ice cool and, most astonishingly, highly realistic alternative, which is very impressive given that this was Mann's feature debut. The film revolves around James Caan's safe- cracker Frank, a career criminal looking for one big score before retiring. We meet him mid-job, using a specially-designed drill to steal the diamonds locked within. We are given little background to his character, but, like the rest of the film, the history is embedded within every frame.Mann, wanting the film to be as close to real-life as possible, employs real cops and criminals as actors, reversing their roles to further blur the line between the 'good' and 'bad' guys. John Santucci, a recently paroled jewel thief, plays a corrupt cop, and Dennis Farina, in his first movie role, was a real-life ex-cop and here plays a criminal henchman. The idea that the cops and robbers are merely two sides of the same coin was explored further in Mann's 1995 masterpiece Heat. With Thief, it feels like we are thrust into this very real but secret world of crime, where Frank, who works alone when possible or employs his entrusted friend Barry (James Belushi) when necessary, agrees to work for shady crime boss Leo (Robert Prosky, who, along with Belushi and Farina, makes his film debut).With so much time spent with Frank (he appears in every scene), a lot rests upon Caan's shoulders, and he thankfully delivers what is undoubtedly his greatest performance. He's the typical tough-guy loner, but he brings so much to his character that we see much more in him than a mere brute. In the diner scene, where he seduces cashier Jessie (Tuesday Weld) and lays out his plans to start a family, Caan's marvellous monologue further layers his character. But Thief is also an exciting thriller. Thanks to the plausibility of it's characters, it's easy to become concerned when a spanner is inevitably thrown into Frank's plans. If there's a criticism to be had, then it's in the formulaic plot. But when a film seems to know it's characters so well and is filmed so stylishly by cinematographer Donald E. Thorin, it's hard to avoid becoming completely immersed.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com