Hacker Cinema
Thief
1981 · Film · 123 min
Directed by Michael Mann
Frank is an expert professional safecracker, specialized in high-profile diamond heists. He plans to use his ill-gotten income to retire from crime and build a nice life for himself complete with a home, wife and kids. To accelerate the process, he signs on with a top gangster for a big score.
5 positive2 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
Yeah, Thief is another great movie.
Light Sleeper is such a great movie. Has a tone and feeling that I have looked for in many other movies but haven’t found. Closest I’ve found is maybe Mann’s Thief?
Fans of "Heat" may also be interested in Mann's 1981 film "Thief". I saw it after hearing it had a lot of thematic overlap with "Heat". It stars James Caan and Willie Nelson, which I took as a selling point.
It's been awhile since I saw it but I remember not hating it.
Make sure to check out Michael Mann's Thief too. It doesn't have bank robbing per se, but it has some very memorable safe-cracking scenes. Great movie all around.
I have gotten more enjoyment out of watching some silent-era movies than modern release movies. Particularly, the 1916 20,000 Leagues is great. In general I don't think there is any real relationship between the age of a movie and the quality of a movie; quality movies are more or less evenly distributed through time. Sometimes film makers strike gold through some fortunate coincidence of inspiration, talent and luck, and most of the time they don't. And yes, that means most old movies aren't good; but most new movies aren't good either.
The passage of time doesn't play a role, because even though individual directors/actors get more experience with age, they also age out of the industry and get replaced with new guys. And besides, it is very often the case that movies get worse as a director ages. Compare The Godfather to anything Francis Ford Coppola has made in the past 30 years. Or Michael Mann's Thief and Manhunter to anything he's done in the past 20. Or Ridley Scott's filmography. There are many examples like this; experience counts for something but old men often lose their edge.
Noir: my favorite genre. Here's some color noirs I don't think have lost anything for not being in B&W: Leave Her to Heaven; Black Widow (1954); Blood Simple; Le Samouraï; Chinatown; Body Heat; Femme Fatale (2002); The Last Seduction; Thief (1981); Basic Instinct; After Dark, My Sweet.
My favorite noir however is indeed B&W: Detour (1945). To me it is the quintessential noir film.
Eh. We have subscriptions to 4 different video streaming services, and still sometimes download TV shows directly to ensure we can watch them e.g. on holiday in a different country without VPN backflips. Even more so if they have ad breaks (e.g. GoT on NowTV in UK); I don't mind paying, but I do mind ads. Not to mention higher quality due to bandwidth dropping lower at peak times, if the service can't keep up (I'm looking at you, NowTV).
I've bought Thief 2 & 3 and bunch of other games twice now, on original CDs / DVD and on Steam or GOG, and used No-CD cracks for the originals for convenience.