THE MICHAEL MANN FILES: THIEF (1981)

“I have run out of time,” Frank softly says to Jessie, almost begging her to listen to him. He wants her to know that his time on this earth has been abnormally disrupted due to incarceration and that his life as a professional criminal has rendered a regular, natural existence impossible. In Jessie, the lady who works the register at one of his favorite breakfast haunts, Frank correctly senses another outcast; a wounded and marginalized soul who is letting the better part of her years slip away from her. He desperately wants her to be a part of his life and does everything in his power to convince her to agree to do so. Tearfully, she eventually does.

Leading up to that conversation in a late night diner, it’s crystal clear that Frank has had quite a day. After pulling off a meticulously executed, all-night diamond heist, he has to deal with some criminals that have stolen the money he was supposed to have received for the aforementioned robbery, he’s learned that his father-figure and mentor, Okla, is rapidly dying from heart disease, and, to top it all off, he’s over two hours late for a dinner date with Jessie due to his having to go through some clandestine, bullshit meet with members of a crime syndicate just so he can recoup his dough from the robbery the previous evening. This is his life, but it’s sure not the life he wants.

One of the most disarming things about Thief, Michael Mann’s theatrical film debut from 1981, is how much it focuses on Frank’s desire to chuck his life as a criminal and to settle into suburban anonymity. As portrayed by James Caan, Frank is decidedly not addicted to the juice of living like a criminal nor does he need the action to direct his life. Unlike Harry Dean Stanton’s Jerry in Ulu Grosbard’s Straight Time, co-scripted (uncredited) by Mann, or later Mann characters such as Heat’s Neil McCauley, a “regular type life” with “barbecue and ballgames” sounds just fine and dandy to Frank. In fact, Frank is so desperate for convention that he carries around a sad, wallet-sized collage of his dream life replete with pictures of children, a luxury car, Okla, and an inexact depiction of someone who will fill the role of wife and life partner. It’s no more exciting than what regular people take for granted but it means the absolute world to Frank.

In order make his modest dream life happen quickly, Frank makes a devil’s bargain with crime boss Leo (Robert Prosky), agreeing to a limited number of complex, pre-set, and high-yield robberies with the handshake agreement that he will be able to refuse any further work after each completed job. Naturally this will fall apart in spectacular fashion as crooked cops and even more dishonorable criminals complicate and jeopardize Frank’s vision for his future.

For a movie that made such limited noise at the box office, Thief’s influence on the crime thriller, in both look and content, is all but incalculable. As to the former, one would think that Michael Mann singlehandedly invented the visually intoxicating mix of wet streets and neon signs in the same way someone bumbled into mixing peanut butter and chocolate and made the Reece’s organization a bottomless fortune. As to the latter, the attention to detail that soon became the norm is directly influenced by Thief’s impeccably shot and edited sequences that highlight the fascinating, granular elements that make up the lives and work of professional criminals. Certainly films such as Jules Dassin’s Rififi and any number of Jean-Pierre Melville titles predated Thief’s love for the Swiss watch-precision in criminal activity. But Mann’s significant choice of laying the hypnotic and percolating minimalism of Tangerine Dream’s prog rock score over his near-wordless action montages pretty much created the blueprint for the look of almost ALL visual media that followed. When critics spoke about the slick, heavily-stylized “MTV look” that crept into theatrical films and commercials in the early 80’s (including Mann’s next theatrical endeavor, The Keep), they were talking about a style the ground zero of which was found in Thief. William Friedkin may have pioneered the idea in 1977 with Sorcerer (also boasting a score by Tangerine Dream) but Mann perfected it in 1981.

The lyricism found in Mann’s dialogue is also in full flower in Thief which melds quite beautifully with the stark, unmistakable realism of the life of the convict both in and out of prison, as chronicled by Frank in his diner monologue to Jessie which eerily recalls the day-to-day life of Murphy in Michael Mann’s previous film, The Jericho Mile. When Frank tells Jessie about an assault on his life and the aftermath that followed while he was serving time, he sounds as if he’s reciting a poem he was asked to write to describe the hell that exists within the prison walls. This is likewise the case when a bereft Frank verbally melts down and makes a full spectacle of himself in an adoption agency after he and Jessie are turned down as prospective parents due to Frank’s status as an ex-con. Never before has the utter hopelessness and anguished inhumanity that is the part and parcel of the life of a criminal been delivered with such control and beauty as it is in Thief.

Unlike Michael Mann projects that would come later, Thief, isn’t as interested in exploring the slippery nature between cop and criminal as it aims to be more classic in its mold while being more progressive in its approach. Thief, for lack of a better term, is a neo-noir where the chiaroscuro is given heavy assistance by magnesium but it is not an existential mediation on the tenuous line between good and evil. That said, in doing some rather interesting things in its casting, it does serve as a bit of thematic foreshadowing as real-life thief John Santucci, who served as a technical adviser and whose actual industrial burglar tools are used in the film, portrays the sleazy Sgt. Urizzi and real-life cop Dennis Farina, close to hanging up his badge for a respectable career in show business, shows up as Carl, Ataglia’s lethal bodyguard. The crossed lines of cop and criminal are all in the casting here but they will soon be at the heart of the rest of Mann’s oeuvre.

Aside from its technical and structural brilliance, Thief will always register as a bonafide masterpiece due to the impossibly high level of passion in the performances. It has been said countless times over but it will never not bear repeating that Thief is James Caan’s greatest hour. Equal parts tough, thoughtful, tragic, and triumphant, Caan slow-walks himself through the role of a lifetime, enunciating every syllable and wearing every nuanced emotion on his face while also turning in a remarkably physical performance (cat burglary looks like a lot of work, folks). As a woman whose past connection to the criminal element has limited her own options in life, Tuesday Weld’s Jessie radiates a wholly believable warmth and an inner-toughness which has been constructed to shield her from certain disappointment and render her invulnerable to easy influence. Jim Belushi is terrific in a rare dramatic role as Barry, Frank’s wiretapping and surveillance whiz, and Willie Nelson transcends mere stunt casting as the zen and terminal Okla, Frank’s jailhouse mentor. Among all of the supporting cast, though, Robert Prosky is the one who deserves special mention. A latecomer to acting (he was 41 when he was cast in his first part in a television movie in 1971), Thief was Prosky’s first big role and he owns every second of it. One second professional to the core and the other the most poisonous villain this side of Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan, Prosky brings a perfect balance to the role that forces him to oscillate between grand benevolence and guttural betrayal. Prosky’s delivery of an absolutely odious monologue in the last third of the movie deserves some kind of special award for being as captivating, thrilling, and rewatchable as it is horrifying, execrable, and repellant.

When speaking about the contemporary crime thriller, Michael Mann’s name brings as much heft to the genre as Hitchcock’s name did with the suspense film and Thief worked overtime to make that happen. And due to Michael Mann’s unshakable fidelity to the detail of the work of his characters and his impeccably operatic examination of their melancholic lives, he would soon find his options opening up exponentially when he redirected his focus from the lonesome, existential life of the career criminal and towards the cops that made their living chasing them. But with Thief, Mann found that perfect vehicle that allowed him to fuse his visual and thematic sensibilities into one flawless package while setting a stylistic pole position for the rest of Hollywood.

(C) Copyright 2021, Patrick Crain

Jim Kouf’s Gang Related

Jim Belushi and Tupac Shakur are an odd pairing on paper to star in a cop flick together, but they’re extremely effective in Jim Kouf’s Gang Related, a twisty neo-noir with a great cast and a few tricks up its sleeve. They play two inner city detectives who are corrupt, but the script doesn’t treat them with the same jaded judgment and moustache twirling villainy that some dirty cops get in Hollywood, there’s a surprising empathy towards them especially in Tupac’s performance. After they accidentally murder an undercover DEA agent, they try to frame a nearby homeless man (Dennis Quaid), coach a few witnesses and make it seem like they were never involved. Things get spectacularly messy when they discover that Quaid’s disheveled hobo isn’t just a nobody and there are people in high places, not to mention both the DEA and gang factions coming after their morally duplicitous asses. It’s kind of like a reap what you sow tale, these two guys aren’t especially nasty characters, but they did commit a really shady act and now the proverbial karmic dildo has come back to royally fuck them. Belushi is the tougher, more unflappable veteran who is more willing to compromise his soul with the cover up, while Tupac is the younger, more impressionable cop and fears the road he’s being led down, and well he should. They both put in fantastic performances, while Quaid does well against type and the three of them are supported by Tiny Lister, David Paymer, Lela Rochon, Wendy Crewson, Gary Cole and James Earl Jones. A solid urban crime thriller, fairly overlooked as well.

-Nate Hill

Two Wolves, a snake eating its tail and a secret- A review of Twin Peaks: The Return by Nate Hill 


Twin Peaks: The Return has come full circle, and I mean that quite literally. Carefully, lovingly and maddeningly orchestrated by David Lynch, who has proven himself to be nothing short of a brilliant mad scientist of the cinematic arts, this is an endlessly deep, fiercely creative vision that refuses to compromise or meet anyone halfway, and it’s all the better for it. Showtime gave the man full and total control over every aspect, a decision they most likely didn’t fully understand at the time, but one which will have a beautiful ripple effect upon the landscape of serialized television and art itself in the decades to come, just as the original series did until now. 
  As the show unwinds in elliptical, rhythmic kaleidoscope fashion, it arrives at what can be called an ending only for the fact that there must be a last episode, but it’s not really an ending at all, there never was one in Twin Peaks, and likely never will be, a quality that has given it it’s vitality since day one. Many are having trouble accepting Lynch’s open ended, haunting finale, and that’s alright, considering human beings are simply wired to seek answers, and engineered to get frustrated, hostile even, when they aren’t provided. If one sits at a table with a jigsaw puzzle spread out, how would it be if the puzzle were quickly, neatly solved? The very quality that makes it a puzzle evaporates, the mystery gone, and one would simply lose interest, get up from the table and walk away. Now, if a handful of pieces are missing and never found, if the puzzle remains unsolved indefinitely, it feeds the observer with the fuel to pour thought, attention and care into continuously pondering how they might fit the pieces together, if ever at all. In short, the mystery lives on, and on. Lynch understands this, and it’s a wondrous gift to give fans, who no doubt will have Twin Peaks on the brain until the day they move on to the white lodge. It is quite literally the gift that keeps on giving. Like a snake eating it’s own tail, like the never ending, billowy curtains of the labyrinthine Red Room, like the portentous infinity symbol that the Philip Jeffries teapot warns Cooper with, this is a story that has ends, beginnings, middles, alternate timelines, repetition and, thanks to the intangible forces constantly at work, will never truly be at rest, at least not in any way that we can comprehend. 
  The themes which have fascinated Lynch his whole career are in full bloom here like never before, but one that takes centre stage after being deftly touched upon in the show and Fire Walk With Me is that of duality, light versus dark and the uneasy realization that the line between them isn’t as stark as we’d like it to be. Leland Palmer was always thought to be possessed by Bob, unbeknownst of his heinous atrocities, a babe in the very dark woods. Fire Walk With Me blew that comforting certainty right out of the water with some very dodgy scenes implicating Palmer himself, blurring the lines to show that although good and evil may indeed occupy opposite sides of the fence, they most certainly hop over and tread on each other’s lawn, a truth that has been shied away from in cinema quite often, but one which Lynch won’t let you tune out so easy. As we see a mullet adorned doppelgänger version of Cooper engage in a tirade of crime and violence across the states, the real Agent Cooper, or at least that part of his soul that’s trapped in the embryonic limbo of a pastel phantasmagoria Vegas, seems lost in a sea of characters we’ve never met before the Return. When it comes time for that inevitable showdown, it’s quick, and the surface level battle is skimmed over so Lynch can dive into a disorienting rabbit hole in which Cooper is stoic, uncharacteristically violent, a concentrated prism of all the qualities that were separate in the worlds that came before, his psyche in narrative nursery school until Lynch hurtles past that 430 mile marker into territories with ugly truths and revelations that are hard to swallow. Two wolves fight inside every one of us, one light and one dark, but they’re only two sides of the same coin, rival essences within a single beast, and although they run along side by side, tussle occasionally and appear to be separate entities, they’re one and the same when they look in each other’s eyes, as we see in the mirror, or when we come face to face with our doppelgänger against the backdrop of a shimmering red curtain. 
Twin Peaks has always been about secrets, from the very moment that Laura Palmer’s body washed up on those shores, wrapped in plastic (or did it?). Who killed her? That one secret lead to many, and as a story unfolds that’s scope vastly captures realms far beyond the sleepy little northwestern town it began in, we see a story at play that’s so much more, one that is very much filled with secrets, a motif we were warned about almost right off the bat. “She’s filled with secrets”, the Arm gleefully imparts to Cooper. That she is. The hollow screams of a shell shocked Sarah Palmer. The haunted, weary eyes of trailer park supervisor Carl (the beloved Harry Dean Stanton). Audrey Horne sharply awakening in the frightening unknown. Cooper and Laura being foiled yet again by the powers that be (those darn Chalfonts). An empty glass box that isn’t so empty. Coordinates that nestle between shrouded mountain glades. Heartbreakingly gorgeous melodies from the maestro Angelo Badalamenti. Pages from a secret diary that document horror, madness, joy, bravery, vulnerability and an odyssey through time, space, love, evil and of course good, the secrets that keep us coming back for more each time. Lynch has spun his magnum opus here, a tale where every piece is important, even the ones we may likely never find. A testament to the power of storytelling, a treatise on the mystery genre, everything I could have hoped for in a return to the town of coffee and cherry pie, and a full on bona-fide masterwork. See you in the trees, and whatever kingdoms lie beyond them in the glow of the red curtain, the purple seas, the hum of electricity in the dreams of a homecoming queen and a lone FBI Agent on a road trip to…

Michael Mann’s Thief: A Review by Nate Hill

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With Thief, Michael Mann distilled his crime film style into an archetypal, haunting aura that would go on to influence not only his excellent later work, but other filmmakers as well, everything from Refn’s Drive to the police procedural we see on television today. A style that consists of kaleidoscope neon reflections in rain slicked streets, Chrome cars bulleting through restless urban nocturnes and a lyrical, pulsating score, here provided by underrated German electronic maestros Tangerine Dream, who would go on to provide their dulcet tones for Mann’s phenomenal 1983 The Keep. Thief weaves the age old tale of a master safe cracker(James Caan in a beautifully understated performance) the high stakes at risk of him performing one last job to escape, with said stakes represented as his angelic wife (Tuesday Weld) and newborn son. Robert Prosky in his film debut is a serpentine wonder as Leo, Caan’s boss, whose chilling metamorphosis from paternal employer to domineering monster is a joy to watch. The jewel heist scenes are shot with a researched, assured and authentic feel, spurred on by Tangerine Dreams cosmic rhythms and are especially dynamic points of the film. Thief, for me, belongs that special subcategory of Mann’s career along with Heat, Miami Vice and Collateral, (Public Enemies doesn’t get to come in this elite cinematic treehouse club, it didn’t do anything for me) that are very special crime films. They possess an intangible, ethereal quality of colour, metal, music, and shady people moving about a thrumming urban dreamscape, professionals at what they do, cogs in the ticking clock of crime that inexorably drives toward the narrative outcome, be it bitter confrontation and violence (of which Thief has an absolute gorgeous, poetic revenge sequence) or cathartic resolution (like the conventionally satisfying way Collateral ends). Mann has captured neon lightning in a bottle with Thief, and against the odds of people saying you can’t catch lightning twice, he has spark plugged a good portion of his career with that same lightning, creating an artistic aesthetic all his own. To me that is the ultimate outcome of filmmaking, and art as a medium.