The Movie: Thief
Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max
The Pitch: James Caan plays a jewel thief who’s trying to get out of the game. But when he gets entangled in the web of a Chicago gangster, extricating himself from the world of crime proves more difficult than he anticipated.
Why It’s Essential Viewing: If you’re a fan of Michael Mann movies like Heat, Collateral, and Miami Vice, Thief is essential because it’s the foundation on which all those other projects are built. To quote a term from the Black Check podcast, it’s Mann’s Rosetta Stone movie: the one which announces his intentions as a filmmaker and reveals pretty much everything you need to know about his style and interests. (Plus, the fantastic score by Tangerine Dream lives up to the hype.)
Caan is excellent as Frank, a thief who refuses to take shit from anyone. He’s physically imposing even at 5’9”, but it’s his attitude, one that puts professionalism first but can turn on a dime if he’s crossed, that makes him scary. His courtship with his girlfriend (Tuesday Weld) is not what I’d call “ideal,” but it’s clear he wants to put his heisting days in the rearview mirror in favor of becoming a family man. A key scene between them at a diner (pictured) contains an early example of what would become one of the defining sentiments in 1995’s Heat: when it comes down to it, survival is the top priority – and for that to be the case, one needs the ability to not care about anything or anyone.
Many safe cracking scenes in movies involve either quietly listening as the dial clicks through the numbers, or stealing the whole safe so the thieves can break into it later. But the heist sequences here are unlike any other that I’ve seen: they feel realistic and physically difficult instead of just being some cool thing one could do in two minutes if you slip into a back room at a crowded party. The big one in this movie, which involves burning straight through a steel vault, is fiery, sweaty, and tactile, and since Mann used actual thieves as technical advisors, there’s a sense of authenticity that you rarely find elsewhere.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
One of the most novel things about this movie to me is what happens near the end. After Frank’s pal (Jim Belushi) is murdered by the mob, and the mob boss (Robert Prosky) threatens Frank’s family if Frank doesn’t continue to work for him, Frank does something I can’t recall another movie character doing in quite this same way: he starts burning his own life to the ground. He literally walks into the two businesses he owns – a bar and a car dealership – and blows them up, and he sets off a bomb at his own house for good measure. Typically in thrillers like this, villains hold power over the protagonist with the threat of destroying what he cares about. But after Frank convinces his girlfriend to leave town, he decides to blow up all of his own stuff and takes that move off the chess board for his opponents. It’s the type of flex that only works if you know you’re either going to die in a big gun battle at the bad guy’s house, or you’re going to wander off into a whole new life after barely surviving. And luckily, Frank is a pretty good shot.
The Series: Batman Beyond
Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max
The Pitch: 20 years after the Dark Knight’s retirement, headstrong teen Terry McGinnis ends up under the tutelage of an elderly Bruce Wayne as the new Batman, protecting Neo-Gotham from all kinds of new threats and rogues.
Why It’s Essential Viewing: Because it’s streaming on HBO Max and it rules as hard as ever!
Here’s my big confession: I never watched Batman: The Animated Series when it was on the air. I was a Superman: The Animated Series fan, and all of the Man of Steel’s sunny, sparkling escapades. My first introduction to Batman was in the Superman-Batman crossover episode, “World’s Finest,” in which we’re introduced to the Caped Crusader as he’s shaking down some lowlife gangsters, to Superman’s chagrin. And I was terrified (I was also like 5 years old). He looked and acted like a villain and I couldn’t fathom a whole TV series around such a menacing meanie.
Cut to a few years later, and I tuned into Kids WB to find something a little darker, stranger, and weirder in the form of Batman Beyond. But at a whopping 7 years old, I was old enough to appreciate the cyberpunk twist on Batman. (And indeed, eager for it, as all kids programming at the time was really into cyberpunk — does anyone remember Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century?) It may sound strange that my first introduction to Batman was through Batman Beyond, later working my way backward to BTAS and the films, but it’s a testament to the sequel show’s originality and novelty that it was able to stand on its own and bring in new fans completely unaware of the Batman mythos.
Batman Beyond is the sequel series that no one asked for, a premise dreamed up by Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Alan Burnett after being ordered by network executives to create a show around a teenage Batman that had no established history in DC Comics. What if Batman were a smart-talking teenager with the former Caped Crusader guiding him through an earpiece? It would take place in a far future that is positively filthy in cyberpunk themes, and feature all-new villains and rogues. None of the familiar Bat-family would appear, except as older, weathered versions of themselves. And somehow, it worked. Not only that, Batman Beyond has become a bonafide classic that stands among the best DC animated properties.
The miracle of Batman Beyond may be in how it gracefully explores Old Man Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy, giving an even more snarling performance behind the sound booth), struggling to counterbalance his addiction to crimefighting with the merciless march of age. It may be in the depiction of Terry McGinnis (a joyful Will Friedle) as punkier take on Spider-Man, complete with his teenage double life and penchant for mid-fight banter. Or it may be the inventive rogues gallery, which both plays to the show’s cyberpunk and sci-fi centric focus, and expands upon the legacy of Batman’s most famous villains.
But we all know it was that awesome opening title sequence.
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