Region 2 DVD
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CD soundtrack album
Tangerine Dream

CD soundtrack album
Tangerine Dream
Expanded Edition!

For some reason, Thief was renamed as the rather uninspiring "Violent Streets" for the UK and Japanese markets. In France, "Thief" was released under another name: "Le Solitaire" ("The Recluse") - and in Germany the title was "Der Einzelgänger" ("The Loner")

James Caan in Thief

The film was based on a novel by real-life super thief Frank Hohimer called "The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar" (1975) This title has been out of print for several years, but sometimes can be ordered 2nd hand on amazon or tracked down on ebay. Click here for the product page on amazon.co.uk

The excellent region one "Special Edition" dvd release of the film was the first to feature a feature-length commentary with Michael Mann (joined by the star of the show - James Caan) In actual fact, it was in many respects a routine re-issue of the equally impressive ntsc Laserdisc release from some years earlier.

Eventually, a UK/Japan Region 2 edition did materialise, but it lacked the finesse of the early USA edition.

One common confused piece of information about the soundtrack for Thief relates to the final track from the LP edition: "Confrontation". This guitar-heavy epic does feature at the climax of the film (and sounds very reminscent of Michel Rubini's "Graham's Theme" - composed 5 years later for "Manhunter") However, "Confrontation" was not composed by Tangerine Dream! The credit actually goes to composer Craig Safan ("The Last Starfighter", "Remo")