Roger Ebert loved the film, and so did the French.
He gave it three and a half stars and called it one of the most intelligent thrillers he had ever seen.
The film is framed as Ebert catnip, with a lot of Chicago in it.

Casting What-Ifs

Jeff Bridges; Gene Hackman; Roy Scheider

In the discussion (4)

Approx. transcript time · 00:59:55Read transcript

Jeff Bridges was Mann's choice for Frank but the studio rejected him as too young and not experienced enough to be a hardened criminal; he is judged too sweet and not tough enough.
Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider were reportedly considered; Hackman is too close to past roles, while Scheider would have been an all-in choice.
Mann originally planned a Chicago blues score but switched to Tangerine Dream for more pulse, returning to blues and jazz in Collateral's Miles Davis scene.
The original title was Violent Streets, judged too on the nose.

Recasting Couch

Jonathan Banks as the sergeant

In the discussion (1)

Approx. transcript time · 01:04:20Read transcript

The sergeant was basically a jewel thief cast as a cop; Jonathan Banks, around the time of 48 Hours and before Beverly Hills Cop, would have been perfect as the one missing type, the 40-year character actor.

Half-Assed Internet Research

Real crooks and Gunsite training; Howard Johnson's booth; real burglary tools; water truck for wet streets; Green Mill's Capone booth; unused source book; Belushi's squibs; Tuesday Weld's Wikipedia

In the discussion (9)

Approx. transcript time · 01:05:14Read transcript

The actors hung out with real crooks, and Mann took Caan to the Gunsite firearms academy in Arizona, which is why his house raid looks realistic.
Per Alan Siegel's research, Mann took his future wife to that Howard Johnson's in 1971 and they talked all night in the booth used for the scene; they are still married 50 years later.
The burglary tools were real, and the actors were trained to use them.
A 60,000-gallon water truck kept the streets wet, a Mann staple he may have invented, though Scorsese did some of it in Taxi Driver.
Mann tells an anecdote about driving around looking at bridges and water before he was a filmmaker; the urban landscape colliding with nature, rain and neon are his signatures, as in Collateral.
The Green Mill jazz club in Uptown was an Al Capone hangout, and the scene was shot in Capone's booth, where he could see the whole club.
The film is based on a book that was optioned, but Mann did not really use it.
Belushi begged to do his own death scene and absorbed dozens of squib shots.
Tuesday Weld's Wikipedia page is recommended: between marriages she dated Al Pacino, David Steinberg, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Omar Sharif, Richard Gere and Ryan O'Neal, and Baryshnikov's previous girlfriend Jessica Lange was her best friend.

Picking Nits

Confusing Frank-Jessie relationship; unclear ending detail; Leo's mall investment; easy baby stealing

In the discussion (7)

Approx. transcript time · 01:12:58Read transcript

The Caan-Weld relationship is confusing; per the director's commentary, editing surgery made it seem like an eight-month back-and-forth, but the leap from yanking her out of a nightclub is still odd.
Her Bogota story is as crazy as his, and believable for the girlfriend of a cocaine dealer.
Something at the end is not made obvious enough, which Mann has acknowledged, and the final shootout is a dry run for Manhunter's.
Was Leo's shopping-mall deal that bad? Malls took off in the 80s and it's a perfect way to launder money.
You get far less than face value for stolen goods ($800,000 from a $4 million robbery), and $800,000 in the bank invites an audit, so trust Prosky; alternate Thief 2 with Weird Science filmed in their mall.
Is baby stealing this easy, and how do stolen babies get Social Security cards? Hospital delivery rooms are monitored like banks.
Asked if he was a stolen baby, the reply is "I wouldn't know." — Chris Ryan

Probably Unanswerable Questions

What happened to Frank; Thief as the first Heat; Frank or Neil McCauley; Caan never in another Mann movie

In the discussion (5)

Approx. transcript time · 01:16:42Read transcript

What happened to Frank? Siegel's piece reports a debate: the director's pessimistic answer is nowhere, while the star believed someone with Frank's determination would get everything back; the ambiguous ending is part of the appeal.
Thief as the first Heat: per the Siegel piece, the star told Pacino "that was my movie"; it's all one movie for Mann, though Thief is about a man alone and Heat is a showdown.
For a $5.5 million downtown LA bank job, Neil McCauley over the combustible Frank, going through Voight's character.
It would have been great if Frank became the Voight-style fixer years later.
Caan never appeared in another Mann movie; in the Criterion disc interview he calls Mann an 18-hour-a-day workaholic, and two notoriously difficult people made one movie and were done.

Producer review

Enjoyed it

In the discussion (4)

Approx. transcript time · 01:21:21Read transcript

The producer, born long after the movie, had never seen it.
He enjoyed it, though it was a little slow at the beginning; his girlfriend did not want to watch it with him.
He liked seeing "Sonny" get his revenge and hated seeing "Sonny" die, calling that his connection to it, and says he loved it.
The hosts joke that he threw his girlfriend out and was two hours late because he was watching Thief.