The story of Frank (James Caan), a hard-working, professional Chicago thief (and used car salesman) whose desire to start a family prompts him to take one last, big score for a group of highly corporatized gangsters, Mann’s low-key film focuses as much on its protagonist’s personal life as it does on the job he’s carrying out. Thief stands between two eras - that of the gritty films of the seventies and the stylish ones of future years. You can see it in the grim artfulness of True Detective or the Zen melodrama of Breaking Bad, in the submerged existential torment of Drive or the elaborate psychodrama of Inception. Its painterly visuals, its tensely dreamlike mood, and its fascination with procedure - these influences have filtered slowly but surely into the culture over the years. In fact, it was also a lot more: In its style, themes, and sensibility, Mann’s 1981 crime thriller is the forerunner of dozens of crime thrillers to come. Thief, which has just come out on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection, can be seen as a serious-minded dry run for the flamboyant style of Miami Vice. (He wouldn’t have a real box-office success until 1992’s Last of the Mohicans.) It was only after he became the executive producer and chief stylistic visionary of Miami Vice - contrary to popular belief, he didn’t create the show - a series that wound up defining eighties fashion and aesthetics as much as anything else in movies or TV, that Mann became famous. Thief, Michael Mann’s first theatrical feature, wasn’t a hit upon its release. Only, no one would realize this for a few decades.

The thief 1981 music at end of film