Thief

Director: Michael Mann

1981 / 122min / DCP

Working with a deceptively simple premise—safecracker James Caan wants to settle down, but first he needs one last big score—Mann’s theatrical feature debut revolutionized the American action movie, fusing a detail-oriented documentary impulse, evident in its how-to heist scenes and casting of real-life cops and cons (Dennis Farina and John Santucci, respectively), with a lavish, pop-operatic style, with Mann turning the city of Chicago into a mythic, rain-slicked version of itself and a massive, immersive score courtesy Tangerine Dream. Disarmingly tender in its famed coffee shop monologue, scorched-earth savage when it turns to vengeance, Thief is a dab-handed genre piece that packs the heft of true tragedy.