My Favorite Neo-Noir: Michael Mann's THIEF

“Keep in mind, kid, until your dying day, the only crime anywhere in the world is being broke.“
– “Oklahoma” Smith, as quoted by Frank Hohimer, in THE HOME INVADERS: CONFESSIONS OF A CAT BURGLER (1975)

“I am the last guy in the world that you want to fuck with.”
– “Frank,” as played by James Caan in THIEF (1981)

Michael Mann’s THIEF is the rarest of creations, an almost-perfect marriage of character, narrative and action. It gave James Caan what is probably the best role of his career. And, as Mann’s directorial debut, it announced his presence in the feature film world with authority.

THIEF centers around the single-named “Frank,” a Chicago jewel thief and safecracker who reluctantly agrees to take down some high-end scores for a mob fence and loan shark named Leo (Robert Prosky in his screen debut). Frank hopes this last string of lucrative robberies will help him create the life he aspires to, with a wife, Jessie (played by a weathered-but-still-luminous Tuesday Weld), an adopted child and an extended family that includes his mentor-in-crime, the imprisoned “Okla” (Willie Nelson in one of his first film roles).

Frank, who’s spent nearly half his life in prison, sees no reason why he can’t have these things, or why committing serial felonies isn’t the road to Happily Ever After. He wants to assemble his life the same way he organizes a heist, and he carries the blueprint around with him in the form of a childlike collage of Polaroids and pictures cut from magazines.

That new life is easier envisioned than realized though. As the stakes get higher and both the mob and crooked cops close in on him, Frank finally explodes, and embraces the nihilism he adopted in prison (what Mann calls his “Darwinian adaptation”). It’s his armor against a brutal world where, as Bruce Springsteen sings in “Something in the Night,” “As soon as you’ve got something/They send someone to try and take it away.”

THIEF is based on the book THE HOME INVADERS, a 1975 memoir by Francis Leroy Hohimer (left), a career criminal and burglar from Chicago who wrote the original manuscript while still in prison. It was eventually published by the indie Chicago Review Press, and soon optioned by Chicago native Mann for his feature debut. Mann had previous experience with the subject matter, having directed the acclaimed ABC-TV movie THE JERICHO MILE (1979), starring Peter Strauss and filmed at California’s Folsom Prison.

In commentary and interviews – most recently on the Criterion Blu-Ray of THIEF released in 2014 – Mann says after optioning THE HOME INVADERS he “threw the book out” and wrote the screenplay from scratch. However, significant parallels remain between the two. Both Franks own car dealerships and nightclubs, and have a mentor in prison (the character of Oklahoma Smith is carried over from book to film, as is much of the wisdom he imparts to Frank). Both are vocational criminals whose young adulthood was spent behind bars, and both work for brutal mob figures who eventually turn on them.

The differences, though, are major. The real Hohimer was primarily a cat burglar who, as the title of his book suggests, specialized in home invasions, targeting wealthy families. The film’s Frank excels in high-tech safecracking and sophisticated industrial robberies (depicted in rich detail by Mann, informed by a crew of Chicago “advisors”). Frank utilizes burning bars, magnetic drills and electronic countermeasures to commit his crimes. Hohimer’s method of opening a safe was to have the owner do it, on pain of injury or death. And most of Hohimer’s entries were by key, not by force, those keys having been provided to him by the notorious Chicago fence and mobster Leo Rugendorf. In THIEF, Caan’s Frank makes the distinction clear when he tells the film’s Leo what he will and won’t do. “No cowboy shit.” he says. “No home invasions.”

(Wikipedia and IMDB entries for both the film and Hohimer himself incorrectly state that “Frank Hohimer” was a pen name used by another convict named John Seybold. That’s untrue. As many sources have confirmed, Seybold and Hohimer were two different men).

Despite its urban nightscapes, rain-swept streets and atmosphere of claustrophobia and impending doom, THIEF is not a film noir, according to its director. In an interview taped for the Blu-Ray, Mann describes Frank as “a rat in a maze, the three-dimensional maze of the city,” but asserts that “I wasn’t thinking consciously about film noir at all. I think in true film noir there’s a sense of hopelessness, a sense of ennui ... that’s not THIEF.”

One might argue that THIEF certainly *looks* like a film noir. The art direction and cinematography, by Mary Dodson and Donald E. Thorin, respectively, lovingly depict a city gleaming with reflected neon, where shiny dark cars prowl wet streets, all of it set to an otherworldly electronic score by the German band Tangerine Dream.

With its glowing neon palette (including title credits that Nicolas Refn Winding obviously paid homage to in 2011’s DRIVE), THIEF does feel dated in a certain ‘80s way, but only in its stylistic tics. In one sense, it’s a throwback to American cinema of the 1970s, when even crime and action films tended to be character-driven. Caan’s Frank is fully realized, a man with a past, if not much of a future. He’s charming, but dangerous when cornered. On one level he’s a classic existential noir hero, yearning for things he can never have, and eventually dragged down into a hell of his own making.

When his partner Barry (played by Jim Belushi, in a role that seemed to promise a better film career than he actually had) is killed, and Leo threatens everything he loves, Frank again becomes the caged animal he knows he is at heart. He casts off his connections to the civilian world, and reverts to his prison mindset in order to become a man with nothing to lose, who can wreak vengeance without concern for its consequences. He tells Jessie that, in prison, “You gotta forget time. You gotta not give a fuck if you live or die.”

Leo begs to differ. “You one of those burned-out, demolished whackos in the joint?” he says. “Don’t come at me now with your jailhouse bullshit, because you are not that guy. ... You got a home, car, businesses, family, and I own the paper on your whole fucking life.”

But Leo’s wrong. As Frank proves at the end of the film, he *is* that guy. When he eventually takes down his tormentors in a brutally efficient gun battle at a suburban Chicago home, there’s nothing triumphant about it. His victory is both cathartic and tragic. Frank surrenders his hard-won humanity and post-prison achievements in order to survive. This rat escapes by blowing up the maze.

(Continue reading PART TWO here.)

(An earlier version of this essay appeared in the Film Noir Foundation's NOIR CITY magazine as part of its "My Favorite Neo-Noir" series.)

My Favorite Neo-Noir: Michael Mann's THIEF (Part Two)

(This is Part Two of an essay that originally appeared in an earlier form in the Film Noir Foundation's NOIR CITY magazine.) You can find Part One here.

Though a centerpiece heist takes place in Los Angeles, THIEF is very much a Chicago film, shot mostly on location and steeped in local history. In addition to being Mann’s feature debut, it’s also full of local actors he’d use again. The late Dennis Farina, a former Chicago cop, plays one of Leo’s henchman. William Petersen (who starred with Farina in Mann’s MANHUNTER four years later) has a bit role as a nightclub bouncer. The leader of the corrupt cops is played by John Santucci, a real Chicago jewel thief who lent the production both his expertise and his burglary tools. Busy character actor Ted Levine (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, MONK, THE BRIDGE) plays one of his partners. Another real-life Chicago cop, Chuck Adamson, is seen as one of the officers who give Frank a station house beating in an attempt to shake him down.

Farina, Santucci and Levine would go on to star – and Adamson write and produce – Mann’s TV series CRIME STORY in 1986, a period piece set in Chicago in the early -60s that eventually migrated – as did the Chicago Outfit itself – to Las Vegas (in the series, Levine played a career criminal named “Frank Holman,” perhaps an homage to the author of THE HOME INVADERS). Other THIEF actors, such as Tom Signorelli and Nick Nickeas, eventually appeared in other Mann projects, including his breakthrough show, MIAMI VICE. Prosky, here alternately avuncular and terrifying (he smoothes the way for Frank and Jessie to adopt a baby, then threatens to kill all three of them), went on to a long career in film and TV.

Mann would revisit the world of professional thieves in his 1995 film HEAT, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, based on a 1989 TV movie he’d written and directed called L.A. TAKEDOWN. One thing all three films have in common is a long dialogue scene set in a coffee shop, in which the characters explain their philosophies, what’s important to them, and how far they’ll go to protect it.

Of the three, THIEF’s version is far and away the best, as Frank tells Jessie about his wasted prison years, and his hopes for the new life he plans to build piece by piece. She’s intrigued, and a little freaked out, but she’s had a rough time with men up until now, and though Frank is no prince himself, she’s ultimately won over by

his sincerity. He tells her about his first year in Joliet Prison, after being convicted on a $40 theft charge, and how he survived the abuse of guards and cons alike – though fighting back cost him another eight years behind bars. Caan and Weld are in top form here, and he brings it all home by giving us a glimpse of a “state-raised” kid who caught one bad break after another. It might be his finest moment on screen.

Unlike Caan’s character, the real Frank Hohimer eventually turned and became a government witness in 1974, after being prosecuted by a federal organized crime strike force in Chicago. He was being groomed by the Justice Department to testify against Rugendorf, who died before he could go to trial. His later years found Hohimer in and out of prison on a variety of charges. He died in 2003.

In retrospect, THIEF may or may not, as its director contends, be a film noir. But there’s no question it’s one of the most vivid cinematic renderings ever of the criminal life – and one of the best films of the decade.

Michael Mann's THIEF

You have to subscribe to read the rest, but here's the first page of my feature in the latest Noir City e-magazine about Michael Mann's THIEF, as past of their "Prime Cuts: My Favorite Neo-Noir" series. It's a great (and heist-centric) issue, with contributions from Michael Connelly, Christa Faust and many others. And your subscription money goes to an excellent cause - the nonprofit Film Noir Foundation's efforts to rescue and restore classic noir films.

Mann's world

Over at THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR (and originally at the Museum of the Moving Image site), Matt Zoller Seitz concludes "Zen Pulp," his five-part series of video essays on the work of director Michael Mann. The final installment is devoted to my favorite pre-WIRE TV crime series, CRIME STORY.

Matt's entertaining and incisive essay (which, in full disclosure, I did contribute to slightly and I mean slightly) looks back at Mann's retro crime drama, which ran only two seasons in the mid-'80s, but whose multi-episode story arcs helped pave the way for shows such as THE SOPRANOS, DEADWOOD and the above-mentioned WIRE (echoes of it can also be seen in Mann's own HEAT).

The show made a star of Dennis Farina (above), and rightly so. As Chicago Major Crimes Unit Lt. Mike Torello, Farina brought just the right combination of charm and toughness to the role. In general, it had to be one of the best-cast series ever. Both seasons were packed with actors who went on to major careers, including Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, David Caruso, Gary Sinise, Ving Rhames, Lili Taylor, Michael Madsen and dozens of others. And, of course, the two-hour pilot (startlingly violent for network TV at the the time), was directed by the great Abel Ferrara.

I used to own the entire show - both seasons - on VHS. A few years back, during a bad attack of the flu that left me wiped out and sleepless for more than a week, I watched almost all the episodes back-to-back from my living room couch. I think if my downstairs neighbors heard "Runaway" one more time they were going to kill me.

I'd always hoped there would be a follow-up two-hour TV movie tying up the show's loose ends (the second season ended with a silly cliffhanger that felt like it belonged in a 1930s serial), but it was not to be. All we're left with is a not-so-great DVD set with poor picture quality, almost no extras and some of the original music removed for legal reasons. Hopefully, someone will get around to doing this right someday. It deserves it.

Matt's previous entries in the series look at MIAMI VICE, Mann's iconic male heroes, the role of women in his films, and Mann's use of doppelgangers and mirror images, especially in his film MANHUNTER. If you're even a moderate Mann fan, they're all worth checking out.