June 21, 2007

What to Watch: Coming Up on Cable

A&E premieres Street Thief tonight — Seth Arenstein watches and ponders this head-scratcher of a documentary (or is it?)

Tube Stake: Programming Reviews by Seth Arenstein

SCENE-STEALER: Will the real Kaspar Carr stand up?

• Thursday, June 21

Street Thief, 10pm, A&E. If viewers haven’t heard about this film, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, they’ll be riveted to it. It’s like no other film they’ve ever seen. 

Street Thief follows Kaspar Carr, a professional burglar in the Chicago area, who strikes cash-laden targets, but does so methodically. When he’s not working, Carr seems to be a good guy, helping his neighbors, cooking dinner, paying bills, driving around town in a Mercedes. But like Tony Soprano, this is a multi-faceted character, whose criminal side surfaces sporadically.

Carr guards his psychological insides—“you won’t get any deep, dark secrets from me,” he tells the filmmakers—but that’s it. He provides them access to his home, his car (as he spends days doing surveillance on his targets) and some of his professional secrets. He wears two pair of underwear when going on a heist. (If he’s incarcerated, he reasons, he’ll have something to wear when one pair is being washed in prison.)

Carr even lets cameras roll when while he’s making a heist. It’s at this point when we wonder if this riveting film and Carr are exactly who they say they are. Good questions. Turns out (spoiler alert!) that Malik Bader, one of the filmmakers, also stars as Carr. Bader proves so adept at being a criminal that his performance is a veritable scene-stealer, even if viewers are left scratching their heads.

All times ET/PT unless otherwise noted.