Michael Mann Blogathon: The Keep

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is a part of the Michael Mann Blogathon going on over at the Seeti Maar - Diary of a Movie Lover blog. If you get a chance, check it out as there are all kinds of amazing contributions so far.

Let’s get this out of the way – The Keep (1983) is not a good film. It is, at times, an interesting one that has its inspired moments, but it is a narrative mess with lackluster performances. It is the equivalent of David Lynch’s Dune (1984) – a big budget folly beset by production problems and an uncaring studio that butchered the film before its release. And like Lynch, the experience was so painful for Michael Mann that he has never revisited it since. It’s all George Lucas’ fault. The success of Star Wars (1977) motivated all kinds of directors to dabble in the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres. For example, in the year The Keep was released, Peter Yates directed Krull, John Carpenter and David Cronenberg tackled Stephen King adaptations with Christine and The Dead Zone, respectively, Tony Scott’s directorial debut was the gothic vampire tale The Hunger, and there was also Something Wicked This Way Comes. These films, however, were overshadowed by the third installment of the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi, which dominated the box office.


After Thief (1981), Mann was offered all kinds of urban crime films. He was not interested in repeating himself and wanted, instead, to do something like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude that would allow him to make a film that was “non-realistic and create the reality.” He worked briefly on the screenplay for Jim McBride’s Breathless (1983) but left that project to make The Keep, an adaptation of F. Paul Wilson’s novel about a mysterious force within a Nazi fortress. The film begins with a transition from a black screen to blue sky and then pans down to the action. Mann would do the exact same thing at the beginning of Manhunter (1986) three years later. As is typical with the beginning of a Mann film, the opening sequence is devoid of dialogue. A convoy of trucks filled with Nazi soldiers drive through desolate countryside. They arrive at a small village in the Dinu Pass in the Carpathian Alps in Romania circa 1941. The town’s inhabitants look at these intruders suspiciously. Out of the fog, the convoy arrives at the Keep, which is to be their new base of operations. The commanding officer, Woermann (Jurgen Prochnow) proudly proclaims to a subordinate, “Now we are the masters of the world. Doesn’t that enthrall you?” The irony of this statement is that it is said before the Nazis invaded Russia and failed.

The Keep is a massive, imposing structure. Mann used vintage arc lamps from the 1920s and 1930s to get “a certain kind of hard blue shaft of light coming through all the openings in the keep.” The village outside of the Keep was shot with very bright light and in white in order to represent innocence. However, something is not quite right and this is symbolized by the fact that none of the rooftops are symmetrical. In contrast, everything inside the Keep is dark. Mann said, “We exposed for the highlight and let all the shadows go. Instead of a flood or a wash of light, there are very defined shafts of light. It’s only in those shafts that we can see things.”

Father Fanescu (Robert Prosky) is the caretaker of the Keep and warns Woermann that he and his men should not stay inside the structure because bad dreams drive out people who attempt to stay too long. Naturally, Woermann scoffs at such notions. He is an overconfident antagonist like Leo in Thief, Waingro in Heat (1995) and Thomas Sanderford in The Insider (1999). Fanescu also warns them never to touch the many metal crosses embedded in the walls. Of course, two greedy soldiers on night watch try to pry one out, believing that it hides some kind of treasure. In doing so, they uncover the vast interior of the Keep and a powerful force that kills them. They have unknowingly awakened a being known as Molasar (Michael Carter). This even awakens a man by the name of Glaeken (Scott Glenn) who lives in Greece. He quickly packs his things and goes to Romania. This man is a loner, much like other Mann protagonists. He is a man of few words, driven by intensely personal reasons to do what he does.

Reinforcements arrive led by a vicious officer, Major Kaempffer (Gabriel Byrne) who starts killing villagers in retaliation for the mysterious deaths of five soldiers. He finds inscriptions on a wall in a language that none of them can decipher but Fanescu knows of a scholar who can – Dr. Cuza (Ian McKellen). He and his daughter Eva (Alberta Watson) are summoned from a concentration camp. When two soldiers try to rape Eva, they are eradicated by Molasar and enveloped by smoke. In comparison to the cold, calculated Kaempffer, Woermann seems much more reasonable. He is smart enough to fear this unknown force and has enough compassion to send Eva to the local inn. Kaempffer is weak of mind, like Freddie Lounds in Manhunter and Van Zandt in Heat. Kaempffer thinks too rationally and deludes himself into believing that he is in control.

For Molasar, the more it kills the more of a physical presence it has. It makes a deal with Dr. Cuza that if he carries out the talisman that keeps it imprisoned in the Keep, Molasar will kill all of the soldiers. However, Glaeken knows that if Molasar is released, it will destroy the world. Glaeken is not just a traveler, as he describes himself, but also watches over the Keep and makes sure that Molasar does not get out.

As the film builds towards its climax, Woermann confronts Kaempffer and tries to appeal to his conscience one more time:

“All that we are is coming out, here in this Keep. And what truth do you see, what are you discovering about yourself, Kaempffer? I murder all these people. Therefore I must be powerful. Smash them down because only that raises you up. It’s a psychotic fantasy to escape the weakness and disease you sense in the core of your soul ... You have released the foulest that dwells in all men’s minds. You have infected millions with your twisted fantasies. And formed millions of diseased mentalities that worship your twisted cross.”

This is not only an indictment of the Nazi philosophy but also the godlike mentality alluded to by Hannibal Lecktor to Will Graham in Manhunter. Dr. Cuza has become corrupted by power like those he hates – the Nazis. When Molasar heals him of his diseased state, he loses sight of what is good and evil.

Producers Gene Kirkwood and Howard W. Koch, Jr. optioned F. Paul Wilson’s book for Paramount. Not surprisingly, Mann was not interested in a straightforward adaptation. He did not want to make a traditional horror film. As he said in an interview at the time, “What it is overall is very dreamy, very magical, and intensely emotional.” Mann admired fairy tales and was drawn to Wilson’s best-selling novel as a way to make a fairy tale movie for adults.

The filmmaker did not use Wilson’s book as his starting point, but it was actually a meeting with Otto Skorzeny in 1969. Skorzeny was a former member of the S.S. and one of World War II’s most successful commandos. He led the raid that rescued Benito Mussolini from Italy in 1943. At Nuremberg, Skorzeny successfully defended himself and was acquitted. After the war, he ran a mercenary operation out of Spain. Mann was fascinated by Skorzeny’s psychology. Mann said in an interview that “the overt politics interest me less than the states of mind: the specific kinds of aberration that explain why a lower middle-class bourgeois in Munich would be attracted to the Waffen SS in 1933.”

Mann also read The Walter Langdon Report, a document commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services to psychoanalyze Adolph Hitler. Walter Langdon was a New York doctor who had talked to many people that knew the dictator before the war. This portrait of Hitler and how he reflected the psychosis of whole nation fascinated Mann. Another primary influence on the film was Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, which posits the theory that fairy tales were complex morality fables. Bettelheim argues that myths have clearly defined heroes and usually end in tragedy, while fairy tales were universal with happy endings. It goes on to propose the theory that most enduring children’s stories do not teach moral messages as fables do but deal with action and horror in a way that allows children to deal with real world horror over time.

Mann first scouted locations in Romania but was unable to find a mountain pass of black rock in Pyrenees or the Alps. He then asked experts at a nearby university to use their geology computer to help him find the location he wanted. With the help of production designer John Box, Mann found an abandoned slate quarry in Wales. The quarry was 150 feet deep and a lift or a crane had to take people in and out. Cinematographer Alex Thomson placed his lights on cherry pickers around the edge of the quarry and at one point 80 miles per hour winds threatened to knock the lights in.

Mann first wrote the screenplay and then made additional changes while shooting the film. “Now the words are plastic, flexible,” Mann remarked in an interview at the time. He constantly rewrote dialogue before shooting which frustrated his actors. Two days before a scene was shot the actors would get new pages. Then, a day before they got additional new pages. Mann storyboarded the entire film only to get on the set and realize that the lighting was different and so he threw them out, opting instead to work on a more instinctual level. On the set, Mann listened to the music of Tangerine Dream and Laurie Anderson. He was particularly taken with Anderson’s vocal stylings and wanted Glenn to speak like she does in her songs.

By certain accounts, the shoot was a particularly grueling one. The crew worked 16-18 hour days in cold, rainy weather. In particular, make-up artist Nick Maley remembers that he had to change make-up effects three times in one week. He claimed that Mann did not listen to more experienced crew members and that eight of them suffered nervous breakdowns as a result of the film’s demanding schedule. Maley also claims that he was exhausted a lot of the time from the miscommunication he experienced with Mann over prosthetics for Glaeken. Six weeks into filming, Mann changed the color of Molasar’s final costume, which meant some scenes had to be re-shot.

Mann described Molasar as the essence of “just sheer power, and the appeal of power, and the worship of power, a belief in power, a seduction of power.” This is a description that could easily apply to future Mann antagonists, Francis Dollarhyde and Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter. Mike Carter played Molasar and spoke highly of Mann: “His direction was simple and clear—always the best. The physical presentation of Molasar was always carefully worked out. The way in which I played Molasar was pretty much my decision. Obviously he would have changed things if he didn’t like it.” However, Carter was not blind to the problems that Mann faced on the film: “We went over budget and over schedule, but he was trying to make a particular kind of film, almost a German Expressionist movie, and I’m not surprised it was as long and expensive as it was. It needed to be a big-budget movie.”

There was a six-month delay because of the death of special effects expert, Wally Veevers two weeks into post-production, forcing Mann to rethink the film’s effects after the cast and crew had departed. Without Veevers to provide the needed opticals for Molasar, the creature resembled the Michelin Man as opposed to an ominous force of evil. To make matters worse, Veevers had not made any storyboards for his vision of the movie and no one knew his methods. The production went over schedule by 22 weeks and tens of millions of dollars.

When it came to the finale, Mann chose between two different endings. Glaeken versus Molasar in the dark cave of the Keep or on its summit. The director went with the former but was forced to scale it down. Originally, he had wanted a more visually elaborate, ending with Glaeken fighting Molasar with a giant laser coming from the Keep that evolved into something akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). After Veever’s death, Paramount did not give Mann enough money to finish the film and he had to abandon certain sequences. French artist Enki Bilal was brought in to help design Molasar. He traveled to Shepperton Studios five or six times and felt that the film was ruined during the editing process. Special effects make-up artist Bob Keen felt that one of the biggest problems was the long, grueling shoot and that by the end of it a lot of the crew members had left.

The current version of the film runs 90 minutes but rumors say that the rough cut ran over two hours. The Keep was released on December 16, 1983 in 508 theaters, grossing $1 million in its opening weekend. It went on to make $4.2 million in the United States and was a commercial and critical failure. In his review for Time magazine, Richard Corliss wrote, “It boasts some pictures as pretty as any to be seen on a gallery wall, and, in narrative terms, it is a mess.” Vincent Canby, in his review for The New York Times, wrote, “The movie makes no sense as either melodrama or metaphysics, so that its expensive special effects go up in smoke. Literally ... At the screening I saw, the film's soundtrack, as stuffed with talk as with ominous sounds and music by Tangerine Dream, was so sibilant that I longed to stuff cotton in my ears or, at least, to hear a character who lisped.” At the time, Mann felt that The Keep was “emotionally deeper because it tries to get at the way you think and feel in the way dreams work.” However, after many years had passed, Mann admitted, “The Keep was really hard because I did something I swore I’d never do again. And that is that I went into pre-production without a completed screenplay.”

Author F. Paul Wilson joined in on the critical bashing of Mann’s film and dispelled the rumor that it might have been the victim of studio interference. “The film followed his (bad) script pretty faithfully. He simply decided that he wouldn’t mention the word ‘vampire,’ anywhere in the film. Of course, that’s the major red herring in the story.” Wilson felt that Mann did not understand the novel or how to adapt it. “He did not build character. He did not tell a coherent story. When I read the script, I wrote to him and I pointed out all of this to him in a very gentle, non ego trampling way, I thought. But he ignored me.” To put it mildly, Wilson was not happy with Mann’s film as he commented in an interview, “the dialogue was wooden, dumb, phony and stupid. And the direction, all those pregnant pauses ... And I would have chucked that stupid looking monstrosity that passed for Molasar. What a joke!” However, like what happened to Lynch after the soul-crushing failure of Dune, Mann went back to familiar subject matter and ended up making one of the best films of his career, Manhunter. I admire Mann’s ambition to tackle a new genre for him at the time but he was clearly out of his depth and it shows in the final film. Since The Keep he has wisely stuck to his strengths – urban crime films and historical biopics.

Also, check out this excellent analysis of the film over at the Wonders in the Dark blog and this comprehensive fan site.
 

DVD of the Week: Broadcast News: Criterion Collection

After the success of the Academy Award-winning Terms of Endearment (1983), James L. Brooks spent a few years to research and write what could possibly be his most personal film to date: Broadcast News (1987). Drawing from his years in television, including a stint with CBS News, he took a spot-on look at the ethics of journalism and filtered it through a love triangle between people who work at a network affiliate T.V. station. In short, Brooks’ film is the Bull Durham (1988) of journalism films – smart, funny, insightful and even poignant in the way it looks at the people who deliver us the news on our T.V. screens every night. In some ways, Broadcast News anticipated the dumbing down of televised news so that nowadays there is a whole generation of people who prefer The Daily Show satirizing today’s top stories over watching the real thing on the major networks or CNN.


Tom Grunick (William Hurt) is a slightly dimwitted hunk that aspires to be a hard-hitting investigative journalist but is clearly suited to be a news anchorman. Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) is a super-smart news reporter that lacks on-screen charisma – basically the polar opposite of Tom. The object of their affection is Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), an intelligent control freak and T.V. news producer. She finds herself attracted to Aaron, her intellectual equal, but drawn also to Tom’s hunky good looks. At some point, she must make up her mind and decide who is worth loving and who isn’t right for her.

Broadcast News is a film of its time, capturing the state of flux that network news was in. Early on, Brooks lays out his views of what’s happening to T.V. news at a conference Jane is speaking at. While she warns of their profession being in danger, people talk amongst themselves or get up and leave forcing her to skip over topics, like trends involving magazine shows and news as profit. Her biggest reaction comes from showing a clip of an elaborate display of dominoes that all the networks showed in favor of an important government policy change. This scene warns of a future that has now happened, making Brooks’ film quite prescient.

As is customary with Brooks’ films, there are some spot-on observations about relationships, like when Aaron says to Jane at one point, “Wouldn’t this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If needy were a turn-on?” It’s funny because it’s true. In addition to witty dialogue, Broadcast News also has its moments of hilarious physical comedy, like the classic scene where Joan Cusack races through the newsroom to get a taped news story to the control room seconds before it is supposed to air. There are little moments, like, en route, where she accidently bangs into a water fountain that makes this sequence so funny to watch.

In a wonderful bit of then casting against type, William Hurt plays a good-looking blank slate of a person. Tom means well and really tries to understand the things Jane and Aaron say but he just doesn’t get it and is unable to articulate himself properly. Hurt could have easily played his character’s shallowness for laughs but there is an earnestness there that is endearing but this disappears as he becomes more savvy in his profession.

Fresh from her hilarious turn in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona (1987), Holly Hunter is ideally cast as the chatty Jane, a person who says exactly what she means even if it hurts someone else’s feelings. Yet, Hunter also shows Jane’s vulnerable side – her awkwardness when it comes to personal relationships. Albert Brooks nails the smug, smartass qualities that Aaron possesses and how it masks his insecurities when it comes to his romantic feelings for Jane. He clearly loves her but can’t find a way to get past that “best friend” stage of their relationship.

Of all Brooks’ films, Broadcast News is the most successful at merging his T.V. sitcom sensibilities with his cinematic aspirations. His film is not only chock full of truisms about network news but is also an incredibly entertaining and witty romantic comedy that is unafraid to sprinkle moments of compelling drama throughout. Brooks not only manages to say something about the relationships between men and women but also how it intertwines with their work in a way that escapist far from the 1980s, like Baby Boom (1987) and Working Girl (1988), didn’t quite zero in on as well. As Carrie Rickey’s liner notes for the DVD observe, Broadcast News is Brooks’ “keenest study to date of human relations, and his most fully realized film.”

Special Features:

The first disc includes an audio commentary with writer-director-producer James L. Brooks and editor Richard Marks. Rather appropriately, Brooks starts off with talking about the genesis of the film and how the success of Terms of Endearment affected it. He points out the bits in the film that came from his extensive research and touches upon the casting of the lead roles – for example, Holly Hunter was a last minute addition. Brooks is refreshingly candid and tells all kinds of fascinating filming anecdotes.

Also included is a theatrical trailer.

The second disc starts off with a 36-minute documentary entitled, James L. Brooks – A Singular Voice, with past collaborators singing his praises. It starts off with his trailblazing work in T.V. with 222, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Simpsons and how he helped change the medium. It also examines his transition into film and the success of Terms and how it led to Broadcast News.

There is an alternate ending and 19 minutes of deleted scenes with optional commentary by Brooks. The ending is quite visceral and emotionally raw but is fascinating alternative to what is in the final film. For the deleted footage, Brooks talks about why it was cut and puts it into context. Interestingly, an entire subplot involving Tom and his news source was cut out.

Also included is an interview with Susan Zirinsky, a veteran CBS News producer, one of the models for Jane in the film, and an advisor and associate producer. She talks about meeting Brooks for the first time as well as telling amusing and engaging anecdotes that really shed light on how truthful the film is about journalism. This is a fantastic extra and one of the highlights of this edition.

There is a promotional featurette done at the time of the film’s release that, at times, plays like an extended trailer only with perceptive interview soundbites from Brooks and the cast. Still, it is interesting to watch. Even better is additional interviews and on-set footage not included in the featurette that runs an impressive 18 minutes. It provides quite a bit of insight into Brooks’ intentions and how the film got made.

 

Thief

While working in television in the 1970s, Michael Mann met Chuck Adamson through a family friend, Nate Grossman, a Chicago Police detective that worked with future Mann regulars Adamson and Dennis Farina. At the time, Adamson was Head of Investigation for the Sheriff of Clark County in Las Vegas. Adamson subsequently introduced Mann to professional thieves John Santucci and W.R. (Bill) Brown (who plays Mitch in the film) in 1975. Santucci spent over eight years as a safecracker and had cleaned up his act after spending three years in prison. He was operating a successful pawn shop and jewelry store in Denver when Mann contacted him. Brown gained notoriety by reputedly stealing London’s Marlborough Diamond, a jewel worth 400,000 pounds back in 1980. The best thieves operated in independent crews working high-line jobs in the United States from the 1940s to the '70s. Most of them came out of Chicago, in particular, a neighborhood known as the Patch. Meeting these people would prove vital to creation on Mann’s next film, Thief (1981).


Thief is Mann’s feature film debut and one that lays out a thematic blueprint for his subsequent work to follow. Frank (James Caan) is an independent safe cracker who dreams of marrying his girlfriend, Jessie (Tuesday Weld), and starting a family. To make this happen, he needs to take on some quick, big-time scores. Frank makes a Faustian pact with Leo (Robert Prosky), a local crime boss and soon realizes that he is bound to serve the Mob for life and this so disgusts him that he takes extreme measures to assure that he never has to deal with them again.

The dialogueless opening sequence that has become the trademark of Mann’s films is established in Thief. Frank and his crew open a safe in meticulous detail and it becomes a study of what they do. One partner monitors a police band radio while another monitors the alarms. This sequence tells us a lot about Frank. He is very efficient, wastes no time and knows exactly what he wants, finds it, and then takes it. Thief also establishes Mann’s particular color scheme. Early on, he uses green and red to represent danger and death. As Frank and his partner Barry (James Belushi) leave the score there is a low angle shot of their getaway car on the rain-slicked streets of Chicago. The red of the traffic light is reflected beautifully on the wet streets and the car door with green light also reflected on the street hinting at the possibility of danger. They could get caught at any moment.

The purpose of the opening sequence is to establish the professionalism of Frank and his crew. He is only truly complete when he is working, which is true of all the protagonists in Mann’s films. What is also true is that they are all loners and Frank is no exception. After the job, there is a shot of him walking alone along a lake at dawn with the cityscape of Chicago in the background. Then, he comes across a man fishing and they strike up a conversation. The next shot is a quintessential Mann image that will appear again in Manhunter (1986), Heat (1995) and The Insider (1999). Frank, his back to the camera, looks out at the lake which represents his peace of mind and contentment. He has successfully pulled off a bank job and life is good but this will be the last time he will achieve that kind of inner and outer tranquility.

Frank meets his contact to unload the diamonds he stole and is asked if he wants to meet with someone for another potential job. This only serves to antagonize Frank who replies, “If I want to meet people I’ll go to a fucking country club.” He is fiercely independent and does not need anybody else. He likes to keep his life free of complications, right down to the plain suits he often wears. It is his uniform, as it is with Neil McCauley in Heat and Vincent in Collateral (2004). Mann introduces the things that mean the most to Frank: his girlfriend Jessie and his buddy, Okla (Willie Nelson), who is in prison. The character of Okla was based on Roger Touhy, an Irish-American mob boss who, after 25 years in prison, was murdered within four weeks of his release in 1959 by the Chicago Mob. All of Frank’s dreams and aspirations are encapsulated in a postcard-sized collage he keeps in his wallet. There are images of a luxury car, a nice house, babies, children, women, Okla, and, most interestingly, two columns of skulls. As he later tells Jessie this represents his desire to die in the outside world on his own terms and not in prison which is the worst thing he can imagine.

The first foreshadowing of the trouble to come is signified by the green glass in the background of the bar Frank owns. He calls Barry on the phone to find out that the exchange of the diamonds they stole for money did not happen. Their contact has been killed by a mobster named Attaglia (Tom Signorelli). Frank pays him a visit and he denies taking his money so Frank threatens him with a gun demonstrating that he is clearly not someone to cross. Of note, the walls of Attaglia’s place are white representing authority and conformity – the antithesis to Frank’s worldview. This is carried over in the next scene where Frank visits Okla in prison. He finds out that his friend is dying and will not last the ten months he has left on his sentence. The two men also talk about Jessie and Frank asks Okla if he should tell her what he really does for a living to which is friend replies, “Lie to no one. If there’s somebody close to ya, you’re gonna ruin it with a lie. If they’re a stranger who the fuck are they you’re gonna lie to.” Frank looks up to Okla as a mentor, a father figure who dispenses sage advice.

When Frank meets a local mobster by the name of Leo to get his money it is a similar set-up to the Van Zant meeting in Heat only on a smaller scale. Both Frank and Neil have one of their crew hiding out in a sniper position in case things go bad. Leo tries to entice Frank to come work for him but he is not interested. Frank tells him, “I am self-employed. I am doing fine. I don’t deal with egos. I am Joe the boss of my own body so what the fuck do I have to work for you for?” Leo offers him a very attractive deal: big scores, minimum risk, protection from the cops, and only diamonds or cash jobs. On the surface, Leo appears to agree to a limited partnership of two or three jobs but alarm bells should be going off in Frank’s head when the crime boss says that he will be his new father. That is Okla’s role. As with what happens to Neil in Heat, Frank is blinded by his desire to realize his dream of a family and he makes a decision that he would not normally do, one that goes against his personal code. It is this betrayal of his beliefs that will cause his downfall.

The centerpiece of Thief, as it is in Heat and The Insider, is a conversation between two characters in which they espouse their worldviews to each other. This is a chance for Frank and Jessie to come clean with each other, she tells him about her past and the bad relationships she has been in. She also hints at an involvement in drug trafficking but all of this is behind her now. “My life is very ordinary, very boring which is good because it’s solid.” She is tough, honest and Frank’s equal. She does not put up with any of his nonsense and is one of the strongest female protagonists in Mann’s films despite her limited screen time.

Frank then tells her about his stint in prison and the mentality he adopted in order to survive. “You’ve got to forget time. You’ve not got to give a fuck if you live or die. You got to get where nothing means nothing.” He recounts a story in prison where he endured a severe beating from a powerful gang leader but the man died as a result of messing with Frank. Once out of the prison hospital he expected to be killed in retaliation, “’Cause I don’t mean nothing to myself. I don’t care about me, I don’t care about nothing. I know from that day that I survive because I achieved that mental attitude.” These lines are crucial to what Frank does later on in the film in order to survive.

Frank shows her his postcard and how it represents his dream and the passage of time. He tells Jessie, “I have run out of time. I have lost it all. And so I can’t work fast enough. And I can’t run fast enough. And the only thing that catches me up is doing my magic act. But it ends.” Being in prison took ten years of his life away. He has little time to realize his dreams and this affects his decision about Leo. Hooking up with Leo will allow Frank to realize his dreams much faster and, at first, it does. The mobster gets him bigger scores; he helps Frank adopt a baby when he and Jessie cannot get one through legal means; and the money Frank makes allows him to buy a big home in the suburbs and pay off a judge to release Okla early from prison. However, making a deal with Leo is akin to making a deal with the Devil. It seems good initially but comes with a horrible price.

Okla gets out of prison only to die in a hospital. Afterwards, Frank and Jessie eat at a Chinese restaurant and through the color scheme, Mann foreshadows the bad things to come with the deep red of the seats and in the background of the scene are green glass and walls. Sure enough, Frank is roughed up by corrupt cops because he will not pay them off. However, Mann offers a brief glimmer of happiness for Frank and his crew. After they successfully pull off a complex safe-cracking job in California, we see Frank, Barry and their families cavorting in the ocean. As is customary in all Mann films, water symbolizes safety but it will be short-lived.

Things get worse when Leo does not deliver all the money for the California score as promised because he thought that Frank would change his mind and work with him for the long haul. For the safe-cracker it is strictly a short-term gig and this causes friction between the two men. Leo resents Frank’s attitude and thinks that he should be grateful for all of the things that he has provided. So, Leo punishes Frank by beating and then killing Barry on Frank’s car lot and capturing the thief. Leo tells him to do what he is told because in effect he owns Frank and his family and he will work for the mob until he is burnt out or dead.

Frank’s only way out is to revert to his prison mentality where life means nothing for that is the only way he knows how to survive. So, he cuts himself off from everything. He sends Jessie and their child away in a cold, calculated way because he has now become dead inside – his face an impenetrable mask. Frank then blows up his home, his car dealership and the bar he owns because it has all been tainted by Leo like some kind of cancer. By destroying it all, Frank is systematically removing the virus. Before he sets out to punish Leo, Frank crumples up his postcard of dreams and throws it away. Symbolically, this represents his last shred of humanity and now he is free to perform a task that may be his last. He no longer cares if he lives or dies. Finally, Frank goes to Leo’s house and systematically kills the mobster and all of his men with a final shoot-out on Leo’s front lawn. Mann shot the climactic shoot-out at different camera speeds to create a staccato effect that he would use again in the climactic shoot-out in Manhunter. The final image of the film is Frank walking off into the night, his mission complete. He is back to square one with nothing but at least he is free.

Mann was working on the screenplay for what would become Thief, which was in fact based on the book The Home Invaders: Confessions of Cat Burglar by real-life thief, Frank Hohimer. Mann needed someone to provide him with inside details on safecracking. He was so impressed by Santucci's knowledge that he not only hired him as a technical adviser on the film, cast him in a small part as a corrupt police sergeant, but also based a significant portion of Thief on Santucci's experiences. Mann used his connections with members of the Chicago Police Department to gain access to real thieves. One man, John Bardolino, stole over $10 million in jewels, cash, rare coins, and precious metals over his career.

James Caan agreed to do Thief based on the writing of a nine-minute conversation between Frank and Jessie in a restaurant where he tells her his personal philosophy about life. Caan spent four weeks before shooting hanging around many Chicago thieves but spent most of his time with Santucci and even used most of the man's tools in the film. The actor learned how to drill through a safe and performed all the safecracking in the film himself. He was also trained to handle a gun like a professional and trained on his tools until everything became second nature.

In keeping with his documentary roots and his continuing quest for realism, Mann cast real cops and criminals in minor roles. When he began casting real life cops in his film, Chuck Adamson recommended Dennis Farina. Adamson remembers that “Michael was looking for a couple of rough, ugly guys to play henchmen and I was like, ‘I got just the guy.’ I called Dennis and said, ‘You gotta get down here.’” Farina was a detective on the local police force but was interested in acting on the side. Mann cast him in a small role near the end of the film.

Thief is perhaps the most pure and essential variation on Mann’s themes. Frank’s entire reason for existence is to create a family with Jessie. That idea was the only thing that got him through his tough stint in prison. He carries around with him a homemade postcard that is a collage of the things that are important to him. For Frank it is a physical, tangible reminder of his goals. As with all Mann protagonists, he works with single-minded determination to achieve what he wants. There is a kind of desperation to his actions; however, the deeper Frank gets in with the Mob and the tighter he tries to hold on to what is near and dear to him, the more his dream begins to slip away. The ideal of family togetherness is ultimately unattainable for Frank and so he reverts to his prison mentality where nothing matters.

While Mann was shooting Thief, he gave editor Dov Hoenig several tapes of music by German group Tangerine Dream to use as temporary cues for the film. By the time he assembled the first cut, Hoenig had produced almost a complete score based on the band’s cues with the occasional guitar piece by David Gilmour. Tangerine Dream agreed to score the film and when they arrived in the United States, Mann showed them a cut without telling them that he had used their music to score it. They were happily surprised and their final score was quite close to the temp soundtrack. Mann worked closely with the band, restructuring cues, asking for specific instrumental combinations and changing the original mixes in order to achieve a certain emotional effect.

Thief received a mixed reaction from critics of the day. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out four and wrote, “Every important performance in this movie successfully creates a plausible person, instead of the stock-company supporting characters we might have expected. And the film moves at a taut pace, creating tension and anxiety through very effective photography and a wound-up, pulsing score by Tangerine Dream.” In his review for Time magazine, Richard Schickel called the action sequences that came at the end of the film, ‘flashy but, empty exercises, pseudotragic searchings for a big finish. They make one tired and edgy—and dissipate the promise that has energized much of Thief.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby wrote, “The movie is loaded with so-called production values. This neonlit, nighttime Chicago is pretty enough to be framed and hung on a wall, where, of course, good movies don’t belong ... The music by Tangerine Dream sounds as if it wanted to have a life of its own, as if it were meant to be an album instead of a soundtrack score.” In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote, “Mann’s compressed, profane, associative dialogue – a hyperized, stylized and poeticized stream of semi-consciousness – is integrated expertly into the High Tech of Tangerine Dream, despite the handful of lines that run awry.” The Washington Post’s Gary Arnold wrote, “Caan’s performance seems dubious in direct proportion to his attempts to sound spontaneous. There’s a studied undercurrent in his would-be casual or aggressive behavior.” He also wrote, “Tuesday Weld’s leading lady ... suggests that Mann hasn’t a clue to the thought or behavior of women. Her role is painfully arbitrary and artificial.”

Caan found the role a hard one to play because his character was not "emotionally available." This existential outlook on life bled into the actor's real life. “For three months, I was a lunatic, I had migraines 24 hours a day, I lost about 20 pounds. And then when I looked at the movie, I couldn't stand it. My eyes were like two pieces of glass. They scared me. I said, ‘That guy's a killer.’” Caan faced the same problem that William Petersen would go on to face in Manhunter. Both actors delved so deeply and intensely into their dark, brooding characters that they had a tough time letting go of the character after filming had ended. But the end results certainly speak for themselves as Thief announced Mann as an up-and-coming talent to watch who had a real understanding and knack for depicting criminal types in a gritty, urban environment.