Caan is great but his character annoys me. He's an asshole. It's slow. Slow is fine when the time is used building character in ways that add some real depth. This is slow paces and sees characters just wanting things with no real depth. It's predictable. The music is awful. My second Michael Mann movie experience and I guess I don't like him.

Michael Mann's directorial debut tells the story of a highly skilled safe-cracker (James Caan), doing very well as a freelancer, who falls for the temptation of glamorous scores offered by a better-connected wise guy. Caan's scuzzy bandit hawks used cars by day and slings boosted diamonds at night, a well-read but not exactly well-learned con man with a chip on his shoulder and a jumbo-sized inferiority complex. He developed his life's master plan while in prison, a grand ideal that's visualized by the oft-referenced photo collage he keeps folded in his wallet, but has overlooked the nuances of building his way up to that big payoff. As such, he's dead-set on skipping the formalities of courtship and leaping straight to material riches, familial spoils and industrial acclaim without taking the time to earn any of it. He gets pretty far by way of brazen fearlessness, unmatched technical know-how and raw willpower - right to the verge - but then the devil comes seeking his due and everything catches fire. _Thief_ is a moody, wet-pavement type of film that's caught right in the middle of Hollywood's transition from slower, moodier '70s crime flicks to the more bombastic, narcissistic rewards of the coming decade. _Scarface_ probably borrowed a lot from this one, with its twisted sense of misplaced confidence, insatiable appetite and steep emotional distance. Its dogged attention to detail is amazing - Mann insisted the actors learn the intricacies of the job, so when we're watching James Caan drill a safe, we're actually watching him do the dirty work - but that deliberate pace is less engaging during the long pauses and awkward hiccups of its human interactions. And the ending is more of a brick wall than a legitimate climax, a sudden rush of violent events that sees us to the credits but doesn't leave us completely satisfied. Right from the start, Mann shows he’s in full command of his medium, but he still has some room to grow.

A movie with so much potential, yet falls to deliver in any aspect. First off, someone remove the action tag in the genre list because there was nothing "action" here. I love how people compare this to 'Heat' which is the best heist movie ever made imo. A part of me thinks 'Heat' wouldn't have been made if not for this. Because everything Mann does in 'Heat' is what this movie lacks. An interesting character(s), stacked cast, score even the cartoonish outbursts by James Caan was done better by Al Pacino, don't get me wrong Caan was the only good thing about the movie (R.I.P). There's absolutely no narrative or character depth at all here, the only redeeming quality of the movie is the stealth mechanisms used during the heist which seems to me has taken a lot of research and execution to pull off. For now this movie stands at a mere 6/10, I recommend watching 'Heat' instead.

Mann was this ever long and boring... First off, the score is so agressive and annoying, not sure why it's so intense but I couldn't wait for it to finally stop—very annoying sound! I don't know why this is labelled as action and thriller but there are no such things in this movie (a few gunshots don't count), it's crime drama all the way. The story isn't very captivating but what kept me in anticipation was the heist, which was promised sinse the beginning. It circles around the drain the whole runtime before that but we finally see it happen in the last 40 minutes. Those **barely 10 minutes** of heist are awesome though, I appreciate the craft behind all the tools used to pick locks, cut wires and doors, it's fascinating and looks great. The characters are interesting but it doesn't feel like we do anything with them. There was this one interesting deep conversation with his girlfriend in the car and then at the restaurant that I really liked but that's about it. Great cinematography in general but the best visual was the intro scene, it had perfect lighting and I loved the rainy setting and night lights. Good dialogue, alright acting, nice explosions and poor pacing.

As another reviewer said, "before Heat there was Thief" and that is bang on. You can see the building blocks to Mann's later work and the plot is a similar criminal world to Heat - theft, fencing, double-crosses. It lacks the even pacing it needs to be great. But it does establish that slow, methodical Mann style of shooting which creates a wonderful atmosphere and gives so much depth to the experience. Caan is merely okay, which is a big step up from the usual crap or terrible, and the rest of the cast are all still employing that 1970s way of acting. All jittery and monosyllabic. It is a nice watch and shows a lot of gritty Chicago - but as a precursor to Heat, this is what you should watch as opposed to LA Takedown. This is the real trial run. 7.75/10