SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

bob the moo Nick Atwater and his gang of professional thieves have just completed another successful robbery for agent Roselyn Moore, however a rare moment of greed saw them take money they found as well as their target. Unfortunately for them this money is the property of the Chinese mob and, although Roselyn gives the money back as soon as she learns of this – the Chinese still intend to have them all killed to send a message. Meanwhile Nick has two very immediate problems – one of the gang has started messing up due to heavy drug use and his step-daughter is in trouble with the police herself. Neither problem in itself is insurmountable but with the Chinese, a crooked cop and a personal tragedy, things suddenly get infinitely more difficult.As a Homicide: Life on the Street fan, I was looking forward to seeing Thief when it came to the UK but managed to not notice its arrival on Sky until it was too late. Having spent ages waiting for a DVD release that never came I managed to get in touch with someone in the US who recorded it off TV for me (thank you!). This hadn't hyped it up for me but I was hoping that it would be good. The plot is solid from the start and I was engaged, thinking that this was going to be a fast paced six episodes. On the contrary though, the mini-series moved surprisingly slow and I'm not totally convinced that it had the depth to enable it to do so. I hate to always bring it into my reviews, but The Wire springs to mind – a slow pace but every hour is rammed with material and "action".Thief cannot compete on this level but it does still work for what it is. The crime plot is good but it doesn't all fit together as well as I think was the intension; the main heist is engaging enough but the Chinese mob and crooked cop bits don't really fit. It also ends rather abruptly as well – so I'm not sure if originally the writers were hoping for more episodes to try and run everything equally and dove-tail more effectively. What does work as part of the heist plot is the family material with Nick and his stepdaughter Tammi. I am used to seeing this sort of material be an afterthought – perhaps even a cynical attempt to wider the viewer demographic but neither of these appears to have been the case with Thief. Although not perfect in itself, this material does strengthen the story and make it more engaging than a straight heist series. However none of these things would have worked as well if it had not been for the single biggest asset in the series – Braugher.Of course I can be accused of bias since he was the reason I came to the show, but he did not disappoint. He lifts the material with a performance that is brooding at times, broken at others and, most importantly, he makes Nick convincing and real and goes beyond just being the character that each specific scene requires. I'm not describing it very well but at no point did he seem to be flicking a switch to act different things – it all seemed to just be the same person in different moments. He dominates the cast for this reason but the others do still do their bits well. Whitman is not perfect here but she benefits from working with Braugher – her character is annoying at times but her performance is good (and a nice surprise for this Arrested Development fan). Arias, Collins, Yoba and Yun Lee, Kim, Hamilton and Hall are all solid in support but Rooker is a disappointment. His character seemed incidental but was somehow pushed forward as a main one – his bits distract more than they add and his performance doesn't produce anything to improve this situation.Thief may not have been as good as I would have liked but it is still a solid, if slow mini-series. Attempts to vary what it is about are worthy even if some parts of it feel out of place or laboured but ultimately it still engages thanks to the usual high-quality work from Andre Braugher in the lead role.

liquidcelluloid-1 Network: FX; Genre: Crime, Drama; Content Rating: TV-MA (for strong language and violence); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);Seasons Reviewed: Season 1 Nick Atwater (Andre Braugher, "Homicide", "Gideon's Crossing") leads a gang of well organized, highly talented thieves in post-Katrina New Orleans. They take from bank vaults mostly, working undetected, until one day they are spotted stealing from the Chinese mafia, one of their own gets greedy and deviates from the objective and Nick's home life with his new wife (Dina Myer) and her daughter Tammi (Mae Whitman, "Arrested Development") is tragically turned upside down. All of this threatens their biggest score yet: stealing 40 million government dollars from the belly of a passenger plane 30,000 feet in the air.After finding success with over-the-top dramas "Nip/Tuck", "The Shield" and "Rescue Me", the patented FX absurdity gets dialed down in "Thief". My first instinct is to rate the show lower than it probably deserves. I'm so used to FX jumping in my face that it requires us to plug "Thief" back in with the rest of the network dramas to see how good it really is. A more methodical character-driven drama taking us inside a criminal organization than a white-knuckle crime thriller, "Thief" is the most like HBO's "The Sopranos" than anything else on the line-up. There is even a gruesomely clever torture sequence involving Linda Hamilton and a long thread of firecracker cable in here.In the thief crime sub-genre that also includes this year's profoundly lame NBC/Doug Liman project "Heist", "Thief" does it as well as I've seen, but at the same time it doesn't break out of the genre. It doesn't have its own unique voice. The show plays it surprisingly safe, unfolding its story crisply and more than competently, but also without any big surprises, twists or turns. It goes where it needs to go, using characters that it needs to get there, but little more.Ironically, what we all came here to see, the big heist, fails to generate as much excitement as the show's apparent B-story - which involves the impossibly trying relationship between Nick and stepdaughter Tammi. This family dynamic is usually a tack-on story networks use to bring in a larger demographic and yet here it is played out with electrifying results. Braugher we already know as one of TV's most talented actors who can't get a break (more on him later), but Whitman is a real discovery. She plays this with a heart-breaking emotional realism well beyond her years. You'd imagine it would be tough to steal the show from Andre Braugher, but Whitman does it. The scenes between the two of them are emotional fireworks.It is Tammi's story that moved me the most and that is the one where we actually feel the most is at stake even though it has nothing to do with Chinese assassins and mid-air heists. Fortunately, the show knows what it has and Witman's story is folded nicely into the main story without a missed beat.The other thing that keeps "Thief" compelling is the simple brilliance of Andre Braugher in the lead. The man doesn't know the meaning of the word obvious. Nothing is big, nothing is overplayed. It is a quiet, sophisticated, even hypnotic, performance where on the page there could just as easily have been nothing. Braugher has once again created a character that keeps the audience guessing about where his loyalty actually lies: the money, the team, his own code of ethics, his new stepdaughter or his wife. In contrast to Braugher is Michael Rooker as an over-the-top brutal caricature of a cop who screams like he'd rather be in a broad Stephen Bochco series than in a character drama like this.Where "Rescue Me" and "Nip/Tuck" are on fire, "Thief" is lukewarm. Even Bochco's "Over There" was a riskier and more inventive series, before it collapsed on itself. As every storyline races to the end, the show's focus gets smaller. There are a lot of irons in the fire, maybe too many, and not a balanced payoff. It would have helped if "Thief" fleshed out the rest of the team members a little more, but hopefully that will be something to settle in future seasons. It isn't as fully realized and clever as "The Sopranos" and doesn't have the silently simmering tension of Showtime's "Sleeper Cell", but "Thief" becomes a careful, well-made, visually gorgeous heist series with two spectacular lead performances to keep it moving.* * ½ / 4

Syl I have to say that after watching it last night. I became addicted to this groundbreaking show. Andre Braugher best known for his role as Frank Pemberton on the NBC show, Homicide: Life on the Streets, which I still consider one of the best cop shows ever made has breathed life into this character, Nick, who by all appearances works in the auto field but his real career is that of a professional thief. Granted, I would have like to have seen the interracial relationship between Nick and Wanda but that was cut too short. NIck's stepdaughter is kind of a typical teenager girl who just lost her mother and doesn't know what to make of her stepfather. Although her father lives in Hawaii, he never comes to his former wife's funeral is a testament to watching this interesting relationship unfold in the upcoming episodes. There are a lot of crime shows on television but this show is set apart by the fact that even the criminals have a code and they could pay with their lives. THe fact that the show is set in New Orleans is also a strong factor as to what they can come up. I just saw one night but I wanted to see more. I like Linda Hamilton's character. She's a breath of fresh air. You have to see it once just to get the feel of it and want to see it again and again. I love Andre Braugher and I think he should get an Emmy and a Golden Globe for playing this role.

lilliansimone There's very little different about this show. It looks and feels the same as so many other bad shows, like The Shield (also on FX!), that look terrible and bring little if anything to the table filmically.someone should clue in FX that shooting on video does not make a show look real: it just makes it look cheap and ugly! And why not use a tripod for a change... Yes, FX executives... hand-holding the camera constantly for no particular purpose is not brilliant direction. It's not direction at all and it's boring in the utmost.What a waste of acting talent that show is. I feel bad for Andre Braugher, Linda Hamilton, Dina Meyer...