Michael Mann is supposedly a certified range instructor himself, but for this film, he had actor James Caan try to attend the American Pistol Institute (a/k/a "Gunsite"), the celebrated firearms training facility founded by Jeff Cooper in the Arizona High Desert north of Chino Valley to instruct in the "Modern Technique of the Pistol." When Cooper learned that the film's protagonist was a career criminal, he reasoned that a thief would never be exposed to the Modern Technique and declined to instruct Caan. Galen D. "Chuck" Taylor, Cooper's operations manager at the time and later a well-known instructor himself, then agreed to take Caan off-site and teach him the rudiments of what the actor performs in the film. Taylor's instruction is obvious, as Caan uses an exaggerated Weaver Stance, high thumbhold grip, speed reloading, and room clearing techniques directly attributable to the Modern Technique taught at API. "I didn't actually have to do any of this," Caan told a radio interviewer during a publicity tour for Thief -"I just needed to look like I knew what I was doing!"

Film

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