A bank heist in Dusselfdorf perpetrated by Junghein (Heinz Hoening) and Britz (Ralf Richter) is underway when things start to go south. They end up surrounded by cops, taking hostages and demanding a ransom of 3 million Deutsch Marks. Leading up the standoff on the cops’ side is a downtrodden schmoe named Voss (Joachim Kemmer) who just wants to wrap this mess up and go home. What the police don’t realize is that the whole heist is being orchestrated by a man on the outside known as Probek (Götz George) who surveys the whole crime from a room in the luxury hotel looming above the bank. Probek’s plan is to have the robbers demand that Jutta (Gudren Landgrebe), the bank manager’s wife, come pick up the money or they kill her husband. What the cops don’t know is that Jutta is Probek’s mistress and this whole situation was planned in advance. What Probek doesn’t know is that Jutta has an agenda of her own…

I do love me a good heist film, and The Cat is a crackerjack flick with lots of tension, twists and turns. As Brandon Streussnig mentions in his great essay in the included physical booklet with this release, while The Cat was released in 1988 at the height of the glossy, cool, slick era of crime from the likes of Michael Mann, it feels very much like a throwback to the more grounded, gritty crime flicks of the 1970s. Probek is portrayed as an extremely smart guy but more calm and collected that the more overzealous, over-the-top villains of the ’80s in movies like Cobra. He’s also human and prone to fallibility. His eventual downfall doesn’t come as a result of hard work on the behalf of the police but in the guise of a femme fatale in the neo-noir mold. The message here is trust no one. Junghein and Britz are just pawns in Probek’s game. Probek puts too much faith in the power of love. The cops just want to get this shit over with. The film begins to spiral, and it becomes increasingly clear that few with emerge unscathed from this mess. The thrill isn’t on whether they will get away. It’s all about who is smartest and will rise to the top. The cast is uniformly great here with Hoening and Richter playing the bumbling crooks to a tee and George really nailing Probek’s ruthless deviousness.

For this release, Radiance was provided with a digital transfer and did additional grading to the image after receiving it, supervised by director Dominik Graf, and the results are quite nice. Director Graf shoots the film very much in the more naturalistic style of ’70s cinema and the seasonally even hues are represented very well across the board with few blemishes to be seen and a nice balance of grain. The 5.1 German audio track is also quite immersive and pops particularly well in the big shootout at the end. For extras, we have a scene-specific commentary by director Graf. While it would’ve been nice to get a full commentary, I much prefer this format than have large gaps of silence during the commentary. We also have interviews with Graf, screenwriter Christoph Fromm and producer Georg Feil, and all of them provide nice context into how the film was put together. The set is topped off with a trailer and the aforementioned physical booklet.

The Cat is a great heist film with a solid cast across the board, a great pacing and enough twists and turns to keep even the most diehard crime fan on their toes. Highly recommended!