In other Altman films, there is always something that people can complain about; they ask, "What's that there for?" In Thieves Like Us, there's nothing to stumble over. It's a serenely simple film—contained and complete. You feel elated by the chasteness of the technique, and the film engages your senses and stays with you, like a single vision. It's beautiful right from the first, pearly-green long shot. Robert Altman finds a sureness of tone and never loses it; Thieves Like Us has the pensive, delicate romanticism of McCabe, but it isn't hesitant or precarious. It isn't a heady, whirling sideshow of a movie, like The Long Goodbye; it has perfect clarity. I wouldn't say that I respond to it more than to McCabe or that I enjoy it more than the loony The Long Goodbye, but Thieves Like Us seems to achieve beauty without artifice. It's the...