Rating: 
Summary: I was awe struck
Review: This movie made me cry like no other movie and I'm not a crier. The film is deeply profound, with so many hidden messages to think about. It is truly one of the best films I have ever seen.
Rating: 
Summary: Another rites-of-passage in historical times story.
Review: We are so used to the idea of Stalinist Russia as a grim, grey place of totalitarian terror, with spies lurking and soldiers intruding on all aspects of life, with citizens cowering in their beds awaiting a midnight knock on their door, their every movement restricted and questioned, that 'The Thief' comes as a bit of a surprise. The central characters, a petty thief, his lover and her son, have a remarkable ease of mobility, as they travel throughout Russia, renting collective apartments, robbing their neighbours, and catching the train for the next town. The police and soldiers are sparse and rather bumblingly comic; there is little sense of an oppressive, unseen eye hampering activity. There are even glimpses of collective happiness, through meals, singalongs, the circus etc. 'Thief' doesn't purport to be a realistic recreation of the USSR in the early 1950s, but a story filtered through the memories of a middle-aged man. This accounts for the flatness of the mise-en-scene, the suspended weightlessness of the camera movements, the somewhat unreal filming of the realistic (grotty lavatories, backstreet punch-ups etc.). The film is, in a sense, a rite-of-passage, with the son, whose father died in the war, being initiated into theft and life by a dashingly handsome young man, whose very presence in an environment devoid of men his age mark him out as himself unreal, as much a phantom as the visions the boy has of his father. This being a modern Russian film, however, 'Thief' cannot leave it at that, and has to be an allegoy for the past - Tolyan, who calls himself the secret illegitimate son of Stalin, is in some way a figure for the dictator, a surrogate father full of false promises and broken dreams, robbing the poor; whose advice for survival is a relentless pummelling of the enemy until you get what you want. He is not always a monster, though, bringing momentary joy to lives drained of it; in his very a-social activity, in his a-socialistness, if you like, he achieves a delusive freedom unavailable in a society designed to murder freedom. In some ways, far from representing Stalin, he seems to embody the potential of his maimed, forgotten victims. This historical focus underlying the character drama justifies the various contrivances and cliches in the film, doomed attempts by the narrator to make sense of the senseless. Watchable enough for most of its running time, 'Thief' can't help seeming unadventurous and banal.
Rating:
Summary: a delight
Review: What a great performance by such a young actor!
Rating:
Summary: Vor aka Bop aka The Thief
Review: What gets me about this film is that most assume it`s about the Russian peoples relationship with Stalin. Yes, but that is just scratching the surface. It`s too easy an explanation and it`s wrong to assume that this movie is all about that because it does not explain the message of the movie entirely. More importantly, it is a movie of role models and how they affect us throughout our lives. For me, many people are lost today, they do not know who they are or what they are doing with their lives because their identity of who they are was never formed while growing up. One of the worst forms of child abuse, if not the worst, is to strip that identity or the chance to form that identity from a child. When it is not seen to fruition, everything else goes with it. Your soul, your will, is non-existent. When he shoots the thief he is in fact showing that. The fact that the thief was a bad man is irrelevant, all that matters is that he made an impression on the boy, showed him love and respect, and when he finds later on that the thief rejects him, the other end of the spectrum, which is symbolic of abuse growing up, he feels lost and feels he is 'nothing..nothing'. It`s all about love and how we cannot form into full human beings without being shown the path of love whether that path is bad or good. It`s like being told there is a treasure to be found and some are given a map and some maps are stolen from those who have them. It`s why kids are into ghetto rap despite the drug and gang focus. The message is not important, the identity is, so much so that they don`t care if they get killed. The id is more important as love and acceptance are important above all else.
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