Search - Thief on DVD

Intensely Stylish and Menacing Noir

Doug Anderson | Miami Beach, Florida United States | 08/19/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The pulsing synth-rock of Tangerine Dream really sets the tone for this ultra-stylish and sleek noir heist gone bad film. The film is like a well oiled machine and when you hear the synthesizers roar into action you know that something extremely bad is going down. This synthesizer noir film has a menace that never lets up.

Michael Mann isn't much for giving his criminals and cops bios or personalities or much else; his characters don't even have last names, they are just hunters or the hunted. James Caan plays "Frank". Frank's a car dealer by day and jewel thief by night and as an ex con who has spent 11 of his 35 years in prison Frank knows that he doesn't have a second to lose and that the odds and the fates are against him. Nevertheless he's trying to defy his loner's fate by assembling a family (that includes a recently met waitress played by Tuesday Weld and an adopted child) but he seems to know from the start that plans do not have a way of working out. So far his life has been like a big blank that he's trying to fill in but he just can't seem to beat those odds and those fates that have somehow decided ahead of time that he is predestined to fail are breathing down his neck. Frank doesn't have a real family. He went straight from orphanage to prison house. And everywhere Frank has been he's been mistreated. Still he keeps fighting back. In prison he was beaten within inches of his life by a gang of predators attempting to rape him but Franks the kind of guy who fought back and left his assailants in worse shape than they left him. The recently released from prison Frank is a guy that you don't want to cross. Still each time Frank pulls off a heist someone screws him over. All Frank wants is to make one big score so he can settle down with his make-shift family but there's always someone getting in the way of Franks big payday.

Virtually the entire movie takes place at night and so every scene is lit with Mann's signature neon lights. Frank runs a car dealership as a cover for his real occupation and the car dealership is always eerily lit by little bulbs that make the lot of cars seem unreal. Its as if the entire film were bathed in an unnatural slightly blurred glow. Its an effect that I've seen in Brian DePalma films and it seems to create a kind of surreal or hyper-real aura . The slightly blurred artificial lighting that we see in the car lot and in the various bar scenes is like a motif that works with the music to create a sense of an all-pervasive menace and both of these things also contribute to the feeling that Frank's view of the world may be slightly skewed. The music by the way is reminiscent of the music in William Friedkin's SORCERER, another film known for its unrelenting menace.

Caan is impeccable as always and even though he's really only given a barely there character to play he has a way of making us feel this anonymous state raised guy's pain and desperation. The first time we see Frank he is using a drill to open a safe and Frank seems to be one with the tools of his trade. Frank also seems to want life to operate as purely as the machines he uses but life is never as predictable or reliable as a machine. When things don't go as planned its like an indication that things will never go as planned and so you can understand why the highly organized Frank flies off the handle at the slightest hint of more failure. We understand Frank's rage each time a plan falls apart and we also know that Frank knows that this is quite possibly his last chance to make a life. So when a deceptively kind mob boss who poses as a father figure betrays Frank we know things will not end well. Usually Frank works alone or with a team that he assembles but he allows himself to be lured in by the boss's fatherly charms. We somehow know this will be a fatal mistake for one of them. The original deal was that Frank would do one big score for the mob boss and then retire but once the score is complete the mob boss not only refuses to pay Frank his fair share depriving Frank yet again of that elusive payday but he also insists that Frank now works for him thus threatening to steal from Frank the thing he values most, his independence. In order to assure this new deal the mob boss threatens to prostitute his new wife if he doesn't comply. Frank knows he cannot accept these terms which tear at his dream of a family and his independence and we know the mob boss who has destroyed Franks dream is going to get the worst that Frank has ever given when we hear those synthesizers begin to pulse and we see that neon glow burn once again. The ultraviolent finale is one of the most intense and nasty noir codas on film.

Excellent supporting cast including Tuesday Weld as Franks wife and James Belushi as his trusted heist accomplice but this is primarily a James Caan tour de force.

Other Caan roles:
*Coppola's GODFATHER I(72)
*Karel Reisz's GAMBLER (74)
*Norman Jewison's ROLLERBALL (75)
*Sam Peckinpah's KILLER ELITE (75)

James Caan claims that his favorite film is THIEF.




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