It's easy to believe her when she's on-screen. Miss Weld's intensity neutralizes suspicions that her Jesse could only have landed at her present station in life through some cosmic mix-up. Caan is most convincing as a nonetoo-bright lug with a talent for thievery and a desire for the conventional life that is forever beyond his reach.
#THIEF 1981 BURGERS MOVIE#
''Thief'' is full of such erector-set moments, when characters attempt to juice up their feelings (and ours) with similes that have nothing to do with them or with clean-cut movie making. Later, when Frank attempts to save Jesse's life by abruptly kicking her out of their suburban split-level, Jesse is required to say of their marriage, ''You mean, we just disassemble it and put it back in the box, like an erector set?'' The sequence in which Frank courts Jesse in an all-night hamburger joint, forcing himself to be honest with her, begins as being both funny and moving, and then slops over into weepy sentimentality.
Time after time scenes start off well and slip into unintentionally comic excess.
#THIEF 1981 BURGERS HOW TO#
Mann may well become a very good theatrical film maker but, among other things, he's going to have to learn how to edit himself, to resist the temptation to allow dialogue that is colorful to turn, all of a sudden, into deep, abiding purple. ''Thief'' is the first theatrical film to be written and directed by Michael Mann, who received an Emmy for his television movie ''The Jericho Mile.'' Mr. He avoids any continuing gang connections, that is, until he meets Jesse (Tuesday Weld), a tarnished but exceptionally chic cashier in a coffee shop, a young woman with a mysterious past that apparently includes having lived with a now-dead, big-time narcotics dealer.Īfter Frank pushes Jesse around a bit (he's expressing his affection for her), the two of them decide they love each other and that, perhaps, they can beat fate and together achieve what the old song describes as ''blue heaven,'' a house in the suburbs and a baby to make them three. He enjoys the freedom of the open contract. He makes a good living acting as his own boss. Though Frank works with Barry (James Belushi), a faithful, Tontolike assistant, he is essentially a loner. Frank stays away from bulky loot like furs and from things that can be traced - bonds, treasury notes, coin collections and such.
The title character is a youngish, used-car dealer named Frank (James Caan), an ex-con who makes his real living as a thief specializing in safe-cracking and big hauls in cash or diamonds. ''THIEF,'' which opens today at the Cinerama and other theaters, takes place mostly in Chicago though the actual setting is in the twilight land halfway between gritty gangster melodrama and that world where writers meditate self-consciously on the sorrows of life.
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