THIEF stole into theaters in 1981, adding its 123 minutes of style-infused intensity to a good year for A-quality films centered around some aspect of crime, evidenced by the likes of Prince Of The City, Body Heat, Absence Of Malice and Cutter’s Way. Though not a big box office winner—69th place and $11,500,000 balanced against a $5,500,000 price tag—it made for an auspicious feature debut from director Michael Mann, who also wrote the script. *

“You gotta get to where nothing means nothing . . . I survived because I achieved that mental attitude.”

Chicago, the underside. Using a car dealership and a bar as cover businesses, expert jewel thief ‘Frank’ (James Caan, 40) lives by an unyielding code fashioned by his many years as a ‘guest’ of the state. He hopes to make a score big enough to spring his cell-mate mentor ‘Okla’ (Willie Nelson, 47), a lifer who is dying, and who doesn’t want to do so behind bars. In the company that Frank has kept, trust means risk. To a point, he has faith in ‘Barry’ (Jim Belushi, 26), younger friend and accomplice. Wanting to leave his past where it belongs, Frank takes two simultaneous risks: a go-for-broke romantic relationship with man-wary cashier ‘Jessie’ (Tuesday Weld, 31) and a winners-split-all temporary partnership with benign-appearing fixer and gangland boss ‘Leo’ (Robert Prosky, 49, debut), who professes a ‘father figure’ influence. Time to get to work.

From the very beginning, the sense of environment is established with the rippling music score from Tangerine Dream setting up a sonic alert, the dark nighttime dreamscape of neon-lit, rain-pelted streets and spark-spitting precision-wielded tools of the trade captured by Donald E. Thorin’s shimmering shadow & light cinematography. Mann crafts real, lived-in characters and the perfect-fit actors bring their A-game with no excess showboat nonsense. Frank and Jessie aren’t necessarily the new neighbors from Joliet you hope to have over to picnic on the 4th, but Caan and Weld invest these battle-hardened survivors with enough believable scarred humanity: regardless of their unorthodox employment choices you want them to succeed in their shot at escape. Nelson’s scenes are brief but strong, his seen-too-much-&-not-enough eyes telling more than guarded lines of dialogue. Casually chilling Prosky and the vividly etched supporting roles mentioned below confidently suggest the reptilian part of our makeup that’s closer to the core in some samples of our curiously capable specie.

Is there such a thing as ‘impersonal passion’? The idea that turned into Mann’s screenplay was germinated by former cat burglar Frank Hohimer’s memoir “The Home Invaders”. With added punch in key secondary parts are Tom Signorelli, John Santucci (playing a corrupt cop; a paroled thief, he also served as technical advisor—that designation glove fit since it was the techniques and equipment he’d used that he advised on), Dennis Farina (36, debut, he was still a Chicago detective at the time;  he’d once arrested Santucci for jewel theft), and William Peterson (27, debut).

* More law & disorder in ’81, of varying quality: Fort Apache The Bronx, Escape From New York, Sharky’s Machine, Eyewitness, An Eye For An Eye, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Nighthawks, True Confessions, Blow Out, Death Hunt, The Pursuit Of D.B.Cooper, High Risk, Cattle Annie and Little Britches. Can’t help but wonder: when 25-year-old Dan Quayle saw The Candidate, it gave him the urge to get into politics, doofus Dan taking the a-backwards message from the movie. How many what-to-do youths saw the detailed safe-cracking in this movie, accompanied by the pulsating Dream music, and thought “Hey, I could do that? And maybe land on a Tuesday?”  Just sayin’…