Thief

From the opening scenes of Thief, we can tell it's a Michael Mann movie: the rain-slicked streets in a dark inner city, the score by Tangerine Dream, the almost dialogue-free footage of men breakign into a safe and stealing diamonds.

Indeed, Thief was Michael Mann's first film, released in 1981, and starring James Caan as an ex-con and professional goniff. He uses a car dealership and a bar to front for his criminal activity, and prefers to freelance, using only his trusted partner, James Belushi.

But after his usual fence "takes a walk through a 12th floor window," Caan meets Robert Prosky, a big-time fence. Prosky comes on all smiles, asking Caan to work for him--he can make him rich. Caan is resistant, but realizes that he wants to leave behind this kind of life and settle down with his girlfriend, Tuesday Weld. In a terrific scene shot in a diner, Caan relates his harrowing prison experiences, and shows her a collage he has made that symbolizes his life and his hopes and dreams.

Caan and Belushi accept the challenge to hit a diamond exchange in Los Angeles. Mann shows us all the details, including how they rig up a tool hot enough to cut through steel, and how they bypass the alarm systems. Of course, things won't go as great with Prosky as he'd hoped, and we get a shootout at the end of the film.

What makes Thief a fine film is mostly Caan's performance as the hardened but still optimistic thief. He tells Weld that he learned to get by in prison by caring about nothing, not even himself, but he still cares about her and their life together. He also cares about his mentor, played winningly by Willie Nelson, who is still in prison suffering from a heart condition.

Much of this film is interesting to see compared with Mann's film from 1995, Heat, which is also about a professional thief, Robert De Niro, who has learned to not own anything he can't walk away from. It also has a memorable scene in a coffee shop, between De Niro and Al Pacino.

Some of Thief shows Mann's rookie mistakes, such as needless slow-motion explosions and shootouts, which make it look like a grade-Z thriller. But enough of it is classic Mann, and more than a footnote in his career.