Thief (film)
1981 film by Michael Mann
Thief (also screened as Violent Streets) is a 1981 American neo-noir crime film written and directed by Michael Mann in his feature film debut. It stars James Caan as a professional safecracker trying to escape his life of crime, and Tuesday Weld as his wife. The supporting cast includes Jim Belushi, Robert Prosky, Dennis Farina, and Willie Nelson. The screenplay is inspired by the 1975 memoir The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar, by former cat burglar Frank Hohimer. The original musical score was composed and performed by Tangerine Dream.
Produced independently by Jerry Bruckheimer and James Caan's brother Ronnie, Thief was screened at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or. It was released in the United States by United Artists on March 27, 1981, to widespread critical acclaim. Thief earned $11.5 million at the box office, on a $5.5 million budget.
Plot
Frank is a jewel thief and ex-convict who was released from Joliet Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois. With a pair of Chicago businesses, including a car lot, as fronts for his criminal enterprise, he sets out to fulfill the missing part of his life vision: a family with Jessie, a cashier he has begun dating.
“Thief (film)” enters the record as 1981 film by Michael Mann. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thief, film and Michael can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Thief (film)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Thief, film and Michael provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1193098. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thief (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.