THIEF

Part of Restoration Roundup and Music City Mondays

As he draws closer to his dream of leading a normal life, a professional safecracker (James Caan) agrees to do a job for the mafia, but they have other plans for him… Michael Mann’s immensely influential minimalist neo-noir looks as authentic and original today as the day it did in 1981. Mann used real thieves as technical advisors on the film and the iconic Tangerine Dream soundtrack has never sounded better. Donald Thorin’s moody and brilliant cinematography seals the deal. This recently-restored 4K Director’s Cut breathes new life into a true cult classic of crime cinema.

New 4K digital restoration of the director’s cut, supervised and approved by director Michael Mann.

“A film of style, substance, and violently felt emotion, all wrapped up in one of the most intelligent thrillers I’ve seen. It’s one of those films where you feel the authority right away: This movie knows its characters, knows its story, and knows exactly how it wants to tell us about them…. THIEF is completely out of the ordinary.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times 



“Michael Mann’s THIEF is one of the most confident directorial debuts of its era, the product of an unprecedented amount of research and preparation…. The story had been told countless times before, and would be told countless times afterward, but it would never seem quite so real and lived-in, informed by a credible sense of the milieu.” —Ignaty Vishnevetsky, The A.V. Club



“Debut features are rarely this confident and accomplished, much less such a perfect blueprint of what to expect from a filmmaker down the line…. Mann has a talent for making cops into Cops, crooks into Crooks, and heroes into Heroes, for telling stories where stark types of the kind found in noir or crime fiction are transformed into legends.” —Scott Tobias, The Dissolve