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The Thief
Price: $43.92 Prices subject to change.
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Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780767831062
Format: Color, Dolby, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0767831063
Label: Sony Pictures
Languages: English (Subtitled), Russian (Original Language), Analog
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Release Date: January 11, 2000
Running Time: 96 minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: July 17, 1998
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Editorial Review:
If you were a widow with a young boy in 1952 Russia, you might take up with a handsome army captain you met on a train. You both would need protection from this post-war world in disarray. And what more solid figure than this officer whose chest proudly displays a tattoo of Stalin? Only the officer is a charismatic but often cruel and despotic thief in disguise named Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov). And the mother Katia (Ekaterina Rednikova), in love despite herself, and the 6-year-old Sanya (Misha Philipchuk), in wide-eyed adoration and fear, are stuck with a nomadic life that demands they relocate whenever their thief-protector's safety becomes chancy. This is the story as you experience it, told in voiceover years later by the boy, a romantic tale of challenged innocence as revisited by experience. And each frame, hazy and tinted with the erosion of memory, seems permeated with the distance between these two Sanyas.
That's the experiential story. But there's another one that holds up Tolyan as Stalin and the boy as the New Russia that must rid itself of the tyrant, and that story is so pat it seems dispensable. Luckily, director Pavel Chukhraj has an interesting enough visual imagination, and a keen ability to either discover or tease out engaging performances, that you can quietly shut out the easy political allegory. As played by Vladimir Mashkov, Tolyan amply translates to the audience the fascination he holds for young Sanya and his mother. In fact, all three performances hold the eye and the mind, belying any programmatic elements embodied by the allegorical plot. The Thief was a 1998 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language film. --Jim Gay
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Fantastic
This is one of the best Russian films I have seen. You will not see a boring movie like our American all-to-predictable endings. On some foreign movies like this you have to watch it more than once to really understand and get the message if you do not understand the native language. After you get it, you'll probably want to watch it a few more times, it is that good.
Rating: - A Film Well Worth Re-Visiting
Pavel Chukhraj's award winning film THE THIEF is one of those special films that should be owned and revisited - like a favorite novel or poem or symphony. Chukhraj both wrote and directed this tale/fable set in Stalinist Russia, a story which encompasses the impact on a child of loss of a father in the war, the appalling living standards in the communes during the 1950s where multiple families and comrades shared space and survived the lack of privacy, and the extents to which people will go to ... Read More
Rating: - beautiful portrait of a land, a nation and a family
The Thief is a story of a young boy who learns his lessons in manhood from a tough stepfather with a Stalin tatoo, a supposed military man who is really a thief.
The three principal characters, the mother, stepfather, and son, are very convincingly played.
The scenes of life in Russia in the 1950s, from the communual apartments to the bleak landscapes, are magnificent. And the story of this boy's life is compelling.
It's tragic in the classic Russian tradition, but a mesmerizing ... Read More
Rating:  - One of my all-time favorites
This movie is one of my all-time favorites. However, I must say that the last very important scene was deleted in this version of the movie compared to the original Russian version. It is unfortunate since that scene changes the whole moral of the story.
Rating: - Forget the Kleenex, get a towel
The allegory in this film of a Stalin/USSR that the child Sanja must defeat went right over my head. So if you're looking for a deep analysis of the directors' subliminal intentions, I can't help you there. But I can tell you that "The Thief" struck me as the most poignant human drama I've seen since "Gallipolli".
Briefly, a soldier's widow with a young son is won over by Tolya, a striking figure in a Red Army uniform which indeed does gaurd a tattoo of Stalin. Once the ... Read More
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