The first challenge of making a good crime movie is making audiences care about a fundamentally immoral protagonist. You can invent a world of gentleman criminals robbing the rich (Ocean’s 11, The Thomas Crown Affair), indulge in garish criminal-on-criminal bloodshed (Pulp Fiction, Snatch), give your hero a hidden heart of gold (Drive, Donnie Brasco), or just make them a little less dumb and thuggish than their colleagues (The Departed, The Town). This often elides the sociopathic nature of organized crime; to be an effective movie, Donnie Brasco had to rewrite Al Pacino’s mobster from the cold-blooded brute he really was to a tragic figure only capable of existing on screen.
Thief makes no such compromises. Michael Mann’s first film, released 45 years ago today, introduces its star safecracker with a lengthy, almost wordless diamond heist, and the clinical efficiency of our protagonist and his colleagues makes you think this will be another story of suave professionals. But once we see James Caan’s Frank off the job, we realize that he’s no Danny Ocean.
