Thief and Labor
“My money goes in my pocket.”
- Frank, Thief (1981)
Michael Mann has always shown left-leaning ideals in his films. Often, he portrays criminals as victims of their surroundings and police officers as corrupt. Even when a policeman is humane, Mann has him sympathize with the criminals in the film, like in Heat (1995). Ali (2001) was released a few months after the September 11 attacks — amid an atmosphere of Islamophobia in the United States that was unprecedented — and paints Muhammad Ali’s relationship with Islam compassionately. The Insider (1999) deals with corruption and mob-like intimidation within the tobacco industry, as well as the media’s compliance in covering up the scandal.
In his film, Thief, the main conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist is based on their different understandings of labor. Frank is a jewel thief who likes working independently but ends up working for a Chicago mob boss called Leo to finance his retirement. Throughout the film, Leo tries to get Frank to do more jobs, but Frank has an end goal in sight and does not see their relationship as anything more than a temporary but necessary ordeal. Their relationship changes slightly when Leo offers to help him adopt a son after the adoption agency rejects Frank because of his past as a convict. Leo tells him “You got friends. Lighten up, for chrissake.” Eventually, Leo tries to scam Frank into more scores by withholding his payment, but Frank declines. “You can’t see day for night,” Leo says. Frank replies “I can see my money is still in your pocket, which is from the yield of my labor[...] You’re making big profits from my work, my risk, my sweat. But that is okay because I elected to make that deal. But now the deal is over. I want my end and I am out.” Leo sarcastically asks, “Why don’t you join a labor union?”
A few scenes later, Leo kills Frank’s best friend and gives him a speech where he describes how Frank has misinterpreted their relationship. Leo says he has been nice to him, but that he does not need to be. “You got a home, a car, businesses, family, and I own the paper on your whole fucking life. Your kid’s mine because I got it. You got him on loan. He is leased. You are renting him.” One cannot ignore the language that Leo uses in this scene, as one of ownership and rental. Frank is in the position in which he is because he does not own the same means as Leo. Leo had the resources to pull off bigger scores, so Frank had to sign on as a worker to meet his family’s needs and his ambitions. Leo ends his speech by saying “You get paid what I say. You do what I say. I run you. There is no discussion. I want, you work. Until you are burned out, you are busted, or you’re dead.” In the final scenes, Frank kills Leo and his henchmen and walks off into the night, having exhausted all peaceful routes.
The film focuses heavily on the actual process of the robbery. It has entire scenes without dialogue, showing characters either studying schematics or meticulously avoiding detection. In the central robbery scene of the movie, there is a moment where Tangerine Dream’s score goes silent and all we hear are the sounds of the robbers’ tools. The film does not jump to these “action” scenes, though. It shows us the preparation process for every little thing — from setting up a way to get the access code into the building to finding out how to break into a vault. The actual labor of the thief is incredibly important to the film. We are not shown Leo’s conversations with other workers, or how he sets up connections — we are shown the thieves sweating and getting their hands dirty. A corrupt cop tells Frank that they won’t arrest him if he bribes them. Frank replies, “Did it ever occur to you to try to work for a living?”
The film uses Frank and Leo’s conflict as an analogy for class relations. Frank sees their relationship in an almost Marxist manner. He sees that if he stays independent then he gets all the value that his labor produces, and if he is hired by Leo then he might make more money but some of the value of his labor is kept by Leo. One can compare this to the concept of surplus value, where the owners of the means of production appropriate some of the value that the workers produce because they are buying the labor power of the worker, and not their actual labor. In this case, the labor power of the worker would be the capacity to heist, whereas the actual labor is the total amount of value that was produced by the heist. However, Frank knowingly agrees to produce surplus value for Leo because he would be making more money overall. The problem that arises later is a different problem, though — not one from a Marxist perspective, but one from a general labor perspective — the problem of wage theft. Frank arrives at Leo’s house expecting to be paid $830,000 for the heist but receives under $100,000. Leo says he has taken Frank’s money and invested it in shopping centers. He says this is a good thing for Frank, but what he really wants is to keep Frank working for him.
What Michael Mann has done throughout his whole career is equate criminal struggles with everyday struggles. There is a reason why Leo tells Frank to join a labor union, it’s because Frank’s complaint is the same as theirs. Frank wants to own the fruits of his labor, whereas Leo wants to appropriate it. Mann portrays the mob boss in much the same way as workers see their bosses. The conflict in this movie is class conflict — between Frank, the proletariat, and Leo, the bourgeoisie.
Cover Photo courtesy of Mann/Caan Productions.