The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025
45. 1981 - Thief
Honourable Mentions: Blow Out, Possession, Raiders of the Lost Ark
Few filmmakers have arrived on the scene so fully formed as Michael Mann did with Thief, a film which instantly distilled the director's enduring mix of urban spirituality and technical authenticity with a tidal wave of neon, Tangerine Dream, and a .45-wielding Jimmy Caan.
Thief is sensorially resplendent, but also boasts a compelling emotional and thematic throughline, of an angry, isolated professional yearning for an unattainable dream, and the exploitative forces working to capitalise on that one weakness. It's a film about the smiling face of capitalism and the ruthlessness that lies just behind it, as well as the twisted catharsis of self-destruction.
Caan's Frank burns everything down in his quest for revenge, which Mann executes in the mould of Donald Westlake and punctuates with a pulsating track performed by Craig Safan, as Frank unloads his pistol into a coalition of wrongdoers, before fading away like a shadow in the night.
An all-timer ending to an all-timer debut.