Street Thief [2006] Malik Bader

http://bayimg.com/BAkiLAAdl Street Thief (2006) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0872224/ Malik Bader has created a film that has the look and feel of a documentary. It employs the techniques of Cinéma Vérité to give the audience an intimate view into the life of a criminal. In posted interviews Bader does defend his position stating that unlike something like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ his film is based on actual robberies and the experiences of real thieves. The excitement in this film comes from the vicarious thrill the audience gets when they feel they are actually watching a robbery. The intention of Bader was to create something that would pull the audience in and to that end he did succeed. Even though I knew about the controversy before I watched the film I found myself getting into this person’s life, regardless of whether he was real or not. After all there are such people around us everyday. Bader has taken the genre more as stylistic approach here than literally. Okay, it is a hoax, there is no way around that but it does represent a novel and imaginative way of telling a story. In the tradition of films like Man Bite Dog, and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Street Thief is a film that constantly has you questioning what’s reality and what’s fantasy. Is this all one big ruse? Are the filmmakers putting us on from minute one? Or is this an actual thief we’re watching? Most of all, does this make the film worth watching if we can never be sure one way or the other? Street Thief is one of the many films in the modern era that’s demonstrated the audience’s ability to become voyeurs. As a mass that constantly feel we have to watch people at their worst and most embarrassing, films like Street Thief will challenge the audience and keep us guessing. Normally, I don’t like being conned into watching a movie I’m told is one thing and ends up being another, but Street Thief had me hooked from the start. Following a professional thief named Kaspor, Bader and crew follow the young man across the city watching him perform jobs, scout locations, interact with other criminals, and occasionally perform good deeds for his next door neighbors who can barely afford to pay for electricity. Through all of this, he ignores the cameras as best as he can, but occasionally tends to bark at them referring to them as nuisances. The lingering question will indeed be, if you knew one way or another that Street Thief was or wasn’t a documentary and that Bader put us on, would you still enjoy this movie? But then, that’s the testament of excellence toward Street Thief in which the atmosphere is so utterly genuine, and the personas so damn electric that you’ll always be wondering to yourself if these are all actors, or actual personalities that hover around the crime community. In a world where directors challenge the conventions of documentaries (Behind the Mask), and or tell us we’re watching documentaries and are clearly bullshitting us (Unknown White Male), it’s quite refreshing for the director to outright challenge our perceptions, and ask us to choose which we prefer to think of Street Thief in the end. Fantasy or Reality? Fiction or non-fiction? It’s up to us to decide in the end. Street Thief leaves you theorizing and debating hours after the credits roll, and I’d say fiction or not, Bader has done his job as a storyteller, he’s left us wanting more.

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RaphSai (2012-01-24)

This torrent any good? Meh, im sure no one will comment for weeks. I'll let you guys know in a bit...

chinoj5 (2014-02-09)

NetFlix has Street Thief in 1080p. Please up it.