Plot; A jewel thief's plans for a normal family life are disrupted when he strikes a deal with a powerful high end fence.Michael Mann's signature style is already fully formed in his first feature film. All of the hallmarks are there, if not quite yet perfected. But it's all held together by an exceptional performance from James Caan. He rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as contemporaries like De Niro, Pacino and Hackman, but at his best he's absolutely their equal and perhaps their better. Well, maybe not Hackman. Dude's the G.O.A.T. in my book, for whatever that's worth.

'Thief' epitomises the phrase 'style over substance'. This film was released in 1981 and one can sense a confluence of various elements found in both the 70s as well as the 80s era of American cinema. Mann wants to conjure up the naturalism and grit of the 70s New Hollywood Anti-hero films, but at the same time one can see the elements that scream the 80s like the synth-pop score by Tangerine Dream, the overly stylised climactic gun fight, some of the overly dramatic dialogue,etc.The basic storyline involving a criminal wanting to move on from his life in crime and settle down by having a family, but being prevented from doing so by the bosses is something very derivative. However it is still possible to make us care about the characters and make an effective film with that tried and tested premise. But unfortunately the lack of depth in the characters and the themes made it tough for me to stay invested and I found myself completely uninterested during the climactic action scene and that can never be a good sign.

What we saw in this film were lot of unnecessary segments of scenes that should have been edited to cut off. The poor amateurish script of a vault cracking thief was absolutely laughable. Guy with a partner and another driver who, like what we saw in the very beginning, was another vague partner of this thief, but it never explained and appeared later. And you should have to ask, where this guy got his heists information, from whom? If his activities inevitably involved such things, how could it possible that mafia, the syndicate, the outfit or, whatever it was in New York would have allowed him to play solo so freely and and so long? The other problem of this film was that this guy actually acted very unprofessionally. His rude, head-strong behaviors were so stupid and so direct without even have the ability to think twice before he took action to deal with the situations. We saw him late for his date and showed up two hours late and exposed himself so noticeable in the bar, and even showed his gun when some of the customers saw his rudeness to his date. Then he grabbed her and forced her out of the door, then when more people saw a scene more like a kidnap, he beat up them, forced her into the car, then drove away like nuts. You think nobody would have called police for what they saw inside the bar and in the street? Most of the dialog was so exaggerated and unnatural just like those unnecessary scenes. But the real cut-off moment when I decided that this film was badly directly was when he took his woman to a all-night cafe to have a heart-to-heart chat and laid out his ground rules for this new relationship, we still saw how arrogant and how rude he was to that woman. But here, we also encountered one of the most stupid scenes and arrangements in movies: He ushered the woman and kept going further and farther to the back of the seating booth, where many other customers sat, and the woman sat down with her back right back to the next booth behind her. And then, he and she openly and so loudly pow-wow to each other with their personal bios. This scene was just so stupid and so hard to take in if you were logic enough to realize that Mann not only wrote a very bad amateurish script but also how badly he directed. A careful thief would never chose such public place to talk about his intention to have a relationship to a woman he liked to be There were so many heavily flawed holes that Mann thought he could get away with most of the moronic viewers, but I simply refused to be one of them. This is a very bad movie with many take-for-granted plots, scenarios and storyline, very crappy and absolutely unforgivable.

Michael Mann's debut feature film. Wow. This film certainly establishes the great style that Mann's films have. It's also a film that Nicolas Winding Refn must have watched before making Drive, because there's a lot of similarities between the two. Both are the tales of men who are involved in heists and criminal activity and fall in love with a woman, until their criminal ties lead to bad things. The only difference being that this film has a LOT more dialogue than Drive. Drive attempts to silently convey the emotions found in Thief. James Caan gives a really great performance in this. He stands out especially in a scene in a diner where he explains his thinking in regards to life, and it's really great. All the other people play their roles perfectly, and it was really cool to see the first role that William Petersen got, even if it's like 5 seconds of screen time.The visual style of this film is what stands out. I watched the Criterion Bluray and it looks amazing. The cinematography is great, especially during night time scenes in the streets, and other colorful scenes like the beach scene. It looks great, and the bluray is stunning.The film kept me on edge, especially towards the end. The tension is there, and it's quite thrilling. I'd really recommend it to fans of crime drama, and also people who loved Drive. It's really good, and it's cool to see where Michael Mann started off.