Product Details

• Actors: Vladimir Mashkov, Ekaterina Rednikova, Misha Philipchuk, Dima Chigaryov, Yuri Belyayev
• Directors: Pavel Chukhraj
• Writers: Pavel Chukhraj
• Producers: Igor Bortnikov, Igor Tolstunov, Sergey Kozlov
• Format: Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Language: Russian
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: January 11, 2000
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0767831063
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,637 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

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

From The New Yorker

Considering that Pavel Chukhrai's movie is set in the Soviet Union in the early nineteen-fifties, it's pretty easy to watch. The center of events is a young boy (Misha Philipchuk), whose mother takes up with a tall, dark, and handsomely immoral soldier called Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov). The three of them scoot from one set of lodgings to the next, armed with little but a sack of stolen silverware; the movie is, among other things, a dark Dickensian comedy of the nomadic-of the need to live on one's wits. Despite the blue eyes of his hero, Chukhrai just about avoids the pitfalls of cuteness, and there is no mistaking his instinct for the stray anecdote and swollen minor characters. As the film moves, rather too hastily, toward its resolution, you might feel cheated by a sense of emotional patness; for the most part, however, there is real grit and sting in this slight tale. In Russian. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars UK version not cut, December 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Thief [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I'd just like to let everyone know who read the comments by the reviewer from Moscow, Russia above that the UK version is uncut and unchanged from the original. In fact I was disgusted to hear that they've cut the ending in the US (DVD?) version. The whole point of the ending shows how Sanyas' life outlook and where he took his life were all being affected by Tolyan. Get the UK version if you can, the US version has been ruined by dropping the original ending.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent in its original version, American cut not so good., September 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Thief [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I saw this movie for the first time when it came out in Russia. It made a very strong impression on me. I am sure you will also find it hard not to feel for the Russian woman, used to being strong, yet so in need of love and protection, and for the boy searching for a father figure in the same horrible world of post-war Russia. Unfortunately, in its American version, the movie had to be cut (probably to make it shorter). Some of the cuts I don't mind as much but cutting off the end of the movie is just over the top! The European version of the movie has another scene where Sanya, now in his forties and an officer taking part in the Afghanistan war ( a terrible part of Russian history, the Soviet version of Vietnam ) and meets Tolyan (who did not die, after all). I will not tell you the rest, in case you happen to find the European version. But I think this ending wraps up the movie much better than the American one.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The movie is about fatherhood, September 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Thief [VHS] (VHS Tape)

For the little boy, Tolyan is his role model and his teacher, something that an ideal father should be. One important thing that's missing is father's love, and that void is filled up over time with regret, pity, and anger. Too bad that subtitled release of the movie cuts out the last scene that was in the original. It basically shows Sanya today and how his longing for that love chased him throughout the whole life and who he has become in today's Russia.