Michael Rooney

In this efficient, Tangerine-Dream-fueled heist-crime thriller, the 1980s sprang full-formed from the brow of Michael Mann. Most of Miami Vice, Crime Story, and Heat are prefigured here—though there are no honorable cops in sight. Dennis Farina has a tiny role; Willie Nelson as usual looked sixty when he was in his late forties. But the show belongs, from start to finish, to James Caan. His last major speech, to the last guy to try to be his boss, is essentially a defense of creators’ rights, or Marx’s theory of labor value, or Nozickian justice, or primal macho integrity. In any case it’s enthralling drama.