This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Thief reminds me of Drive.

I love Drive. And I love Thief too.

I love the quiet Ryan Gosling; and I love the aggressive James Caan.

I love the driver who has a specific set of rules; and I love Frank who lives by his own principles.

I love the silence and serenity between Gosling and Mulligan; and I love Caan's avalanche of conversation with Weld.

I love the driver's trucker jacket; and I love Frank's leather jacket.

I love Cliff Martinez's synth soundtrack, and I love Tangerine Dream's 80's score.

I love the neon-lit night sky in Los Angeles; and I love the neon-lit night sky in Chicago.

I love Nicholas Winding Refn, and most naturally, I love the great Michael Mann.

Two equally amazing films, 30 years apart.

"I am the last guy in the world that you wanna fuck with."

Noir-vember film #6

Michael Mann makes movies about god damn fucking professionals.

99

Two people. A diner. Conversation. It is Michael Mann's solace; a place for connection, empathy, understanding. Coffee boils while the night burns with sinister, aching glory through the windows. While shootouts and modern cowboys have become a Mann staple, it is the moments where they sit down with a lover or an opponent and discuss their processes, their structure, their confinement which echo across his narratives. Thief, as Mann puts it, is a 3 dimensional maze and nighttime is the roof, but under the artificial shine of a local breakfast place, there's a yearning for commonality. The diner scene in Heat ends with tension diffused but not removed. The diner scene in Thief ends with hands clasping, joining together in solidarity and love. Maybe not Mann's most romantic (Miami Vice), but it sizzles like no other. Quick shout-out to the 'morning after' lakefront scene: oh so human and compassionate.

".......You want a danish?"

"Why don't you join a labor union?"
"I'm wearing it."

Scott Caan's dad in Michael Mann's debut film as the last guy in the world you want to fuck with. Getting your point across. A pot-head jailbird who can't wait to get on the road again. A soulful house-band. The Belushi no one gives a fuck about. A fat-fuck mob boss who talks way too much shit. Dirty cops. Courtroom shenanigans. Front-porch adoptions. Police brutality. A Melville-esque heist. A fun day at the beach. Not playing by the rules. Tuesday's gone with the wind. Blowing every last mutha fuckin thing up. Taking out the trash G.T.A style. Mann's debut fuckin owns.

Tales of self-deception. In aesthetic terms it is Melville mannerist French appropriation of American fatalism reclaimed by way of Andrew L. Stone docu-litetalism and Hawksian pragmatism. So it is all doomed romanticism turned into a series of practical decisions that instead of reinforcing freedom in the big American individualism way slowly takes it away. Mann’s immersive direction and Caan very lived in performance go incredible well together. The film just nails a mix of longing arriving into dead-end desperation. As far as Hollywood debuts go, Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James is Thief’s only competition in how perfect it sets the filmmaker auteurist credentials.

Set the template for the rest of Michael Mann’s career by balancing abstraction, archetype, and technical realism. The depiction of crime and criminality is at once strikingly deglamorized and extremely stylized; the opening stretch is a triumph of post-noir form, parts of the middle feel like a fairytale, and the climactic vault break-in looks like science fiction, but this is still a film that owes a lot to the preceding decade’s downbeat character studies and macho tragedies. (This is the only Mann where one can detect the influence of Peckinpah.) All movies about debts and codes become existential allegories at a certain point, and here we’ve also got syndicates, lone operators, surfaces, the false promise of middle-class stability. There is probably a lot of Mann in Frank. Who knows how many times I’ve seen this, but it still sucks me in.

A simple crime thriller blueprint.. but Mann-ified so the emphasis on visuals and characters are notched to 11 while its soundwaved by a Tangerine Dream banger of a score. I recently read the novel this was based on The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar so I figured I’d start my day with this scorcher.

Top tier Mann.

The cost of the American dream is your soul. So now you know the plot.

The break-in sequences are the highlight, slow-burning, detailed, quiet. Meditations on the act, tight focus on tools, on doors, on methods, meditations on craft. Frank is, despite (because of?) the nature of his craft, a true craftsman, a man who works with his hands. He is in a strange way non-capitalist--he's a worker who takes his pay directly, without a boss, without management controlling the capital--until he takes work from the mob. After that, fittingly, he's another drone fighting for the American dream, trapped in the system. Mann ensures we know this.

vision boards work

James Caan: “You got an eight year old black chink, we’ll take him.”

Me: now THIS is cinema.

Every night scene in this movie feels like a fever dream.

The soundtrack is incredible, it feels like it’s another character in the movie, and heightens every scene it appears in. 

And my god, the way that intensity and stakes are built up, especially in sequences without any dialogue, was so engaging.

It’s like shut the fuck up and get stressed while this guy uses a DRILL TO OPEN A SHIT.

There are parts of this that I like (the heists are pretty compelling, and the Tangerine Dream score drips 80s ambience) but what ultimately fails for me is the casting. I don’t believe the relationship between James Caan and Tuesday Weld, and I especially don’t buy James Caan as the ex-con who doesn’t give a fuck during the climax, which when combined essentially disconnects me from any sense of stakes and just leaves me feeling cold.

James Caan 4 prez. I’m playing GTA rn but I swear this inspired GTA

Immer wieder ein Fest. Wie kann man nur als Film so toll aussehen?

Solid movie, nothing that will blow you away per se. great soundtrack, well acted and casted

Didn’t like the movie but I did like James Caans posture.

Liked this even more than i expected. Super cool stylish movie and gratifying ending. Although James Caan’s torso haunts me...

A subtle exploration of one man's desire to become a father by way of standing a woman up for a date, marrying her the next day, and acquiring a child on the black market.

Hard work for the worst union ever, with one way out. A template for much of Michael Mann’s career, steel-nerved and cool, pulsing electricity just under the surface. Chicago at night.

Blu-Ray

God damn this movie... fuck.

“Great visuals...
Great directing...
Killer soundtrack...”
        -Zach Sagen, 2020

“Great Story...
Killer performances...
Killer effects...
Killer lighting...”
         -Me, 2020

“The movie just kicks ass.
It’s a kick ass movie.”
         -Both of us, 2020

Only problem was I was tired and I was trying to fight dozing off, ‘cause it was an amazing ride, and I refuse to fall asleep to something like this.
Fuck. I need to rewatch this again... immediately... whilst awake. This is an essential viewing for anyone I feel. 

9.4/10