Thief – Director's Cut

Michael Mann - best known today as the creator of Heat, the bank robbery movie that everyone has copied ever since - made his feature film debut with Thief. And it's fair to say that this is where it all began.

James Caan, almost a decade after his acclaimed supporting role in The Godfather, carries this film as a meticulous, conscientious safecracker who lives his life according to his own strict rules. When he falls in love with a woman and begins to imagine a normal life, he falls deeper and deeper into the clutches of a local gangster - and his carefully constructed system begins to crumble.

Mann stages Chicago at night as a glittering, relentless tableau of neon lights, wet asphalt and synthetic sounds - the soundtrack by Tangerine Dream has long been legendary. Thief is a film about control: who has it, who loses it, and what a man is willing to destroy when he realizes that it never really belonged to him.