Thief 4K 1981 Ultra HD 2160p

Many now-famous directors had their first picture released in the style of the proverbial first pancake. The debuts of some were praised. But very few of the first movie turned out to be a kind of collection of all the main motives and ideas of subsequent work.

“Thief” is, if I may say so, a typical movie from Michael Mann in its infancy. The plot is centered on a man living on the wrong side of the law, whom the author and the viewer sympathize with but do not admire. Frank (James Caan) sticks to his principles, is dedicated to his cause (breaking into safes) and is ready, like a true gangster, to drop everything in thirty seconds. Frank, as is customary with Mann, is an anti-hero who in the end has to make a choice and get even with even more bad guys. The story itself is pretty simple: a veteran robber decides to work for powerful people in order to pull off his last two or three jobs and retire. However, despite its simplicity (and largely because of it), the script doesn't allow for plot holes.

In his debut feature, it's easy to find Mann's fondness for some of the elements that became more detailed in his later work. Here you have the obligatory scene of dialog in a night cafe, and Mann's passion for the night, at the time captured on conventional film, not digital. The characters of the movie live in the night, coming out into daylight only to relax in the family circle or to look for a new object for the next robbery.

The director from the very beginning of his creative path did not like female characters, not giving them proper screen attention. By and large, the main and only heroine exists in the movie for a more thorough disclosure of Frank's character, and having fulfilled her function, she disappears from the movie forever.

Mann pays great attention to realism and various minutiae in the work of the bearhuggers. Where usually the safe-breaking takes no more than a minute and is accompanied by a clip montage, the director keeps the camera chained in one position, showing slowly, meticulously, maybe even a little boringly the work of professionals who are ready to pay for it with a prison sentence. Suffice it to say that Mann was consulted by real bear hunters on the set, real-life equipment was used, steel doors....

So why, for all its pluses, is “Thief” a movie from Mann in its infancy? Most likely for two reasons. First, the director's love for secondary lines that run through the entire movie, helping to better reveal this or that character, and getting plot completion in the end, here played a cruel joke with Michael: almost all of them exist in the movie by themselves, without affecting the main plot, and the most prominent of them - the line of Frank's longtime friend, who needs an urgent exit from places not so remote - before the beginning, completely disappears from the movie.

Secondly, the director likes to stretch the scenes. And if in scenes of robberies it can be justified by bringing an element of realism into the picture, then to watch for a minute the reflection of neon advertising on the hood of the car - it is, perhaps, too much. “Thief” would look much livelier if you take out of it about ten minutes of such shots, which bring nothing to the movie.

Verdict: a debut work, not so well-calibrated and polished to a shine, but of considerable interest to all fans (and not only) of Michael Mann's work.