Credit: MGM

‘Thief’: the early Michael Mann movie that blew Quentin Tarantino’s mind

Mon 6 February 2023 14:00, UK

When Michael Mann watched Stanley Kubrick’s satirical black comedy Dr Strangelove as a university student, he fell in love with cinema in an instant, referring to the film as a “revelation”. The filmmaker moved from Chicago to London to study cinema at the prestigious London Film School before making advertisements with contemporaries such as Adrien Lyne and Ridley Scott.

After capturing footage of the Paris student revolts during May 1968, Mann developed what he witnessed into the short film Jaunpuri, winning him the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize in 1970. He returned to the United States for the rest of the decade, working on several television shows such as Starsky and Hutch and Police Story. By the end of the ’70s, Mann had released his first film, the made-for-television movie The Jericho Mile. He won an Emmy for ‘Outstanding Writing in a Limited Series or a Special’ and the DGA Best Director Award – his first taste of the success he would come to garner, including an Academy Award and multiple BAFTAs.

Mann’s cinematic feature debut was Thief starring James Caan, employing the technical advice of former burglars to make the film as realistic as possible. Based on the novel The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar by Frank Hohimer, the film also starred John Belushi, Robert Prosky and Willie Nelson. Thief was received well and paved the way for his upcoming projects, including the highly successful feature film Heat, The Last of the Mohicans and The Insider.

During an episode of The Video Archives Podcast with Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, the Pulp Fiction director shared his thoughts on Mann’s cinematic debut, hailing Thief as mindblowing. He explained: “When Michael Mann came out with Thief with James Caan, he blew our minds”. Detailing further, Tarantino continued, “It was like roll over John Carpenter, tell Walter Hill … there’s a new guy out there on the crime film scene who wrote great, gritty dialogue, he had a wonderful visual sense.” Avery chimed in, describing Thief as “an existential crime film […] it elevates the form”.

Tarantino explained: “It was the only one of the crime films that came out within a three-year period that had the same resonance of a crime novel. But also, right from the beginning, he was a stylist, there was an orchestrator involved, there was a director involved.”

Moreover, Avary explained: “it would be a lie to say that Thief wasn’t a massive influence on me when I was thinking about Killing Zoe. When I was designing all of the bank drilling stuff, I was literally […] cowering in the shadow of Michael Mann.”

Listen to the full episode below.