Thief (1981) on Netflix
Frank, an ex-convict and safecracker, covers his jewel heists with a Chicago car lot and cocktail lounge. He wants out and a life with Jessie. Leo, a high-level fence, offers a score.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.4/1051,541 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
Frank runs a Chicago used car lot and a cocktail lounge, and both are fronts for the jewel thefts that actually pay. He works with a small crew but insists on doing everything his own way. Fresh out of Joliet Correctional Center, he wants a settled life with Jessie, the woman he has been seeing, and the two of them hope to adopt a baby. His mentor Okla is ailing in prison and does not want to die there. Crooked detectives who know Frank has something big in the works press him for a cut. Leo, a high-level fence, returns money owed to Frank and asks him to work directly for him, which would mean one more score.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Thief (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Michael Mann hired working thieves as technical advisers, so the safecracking gear on screen, down to the oxy lance used to burn into a safe, is the real thing.
- The casting crossed the line both ways: Dennis Farina was a serving Chicago police officer when he played a mob henchman, while John Santucci, who plays the crooked cop Urizzi, was a recently paroled thief, partly the model for James Caan's Frank, and worked as a technical adviser.
SPOILER
For the scene in which Frank blows up his house, the crew built a false front onto a real house. The explosives did so much damage to the real building that it had to be demolished.- Tangerine Dream's score was nominated for a Razzie as Worst Musical Score. It did not put Mann off: he hired the group again for his next feature, the 1983 war horror The Keep.
- Mann first meant to score the film with Chicago blues, then decided that music so tied to one place would make Frank's experience feel like his alone, and chose the transparency of electronic music instead, which led him to Tangerine Dream.
