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THE GOOD THIEF Send This Review to a Friend
As remakes go, "The Good Thief" fairly well holds its own, although in my memory bank it is no match for French director Jean-Pierre Melville's super cool 1955 "Bob le flambeur." The new version has a showy role for Nick Nolte as Bob, here depicted as a down-on-his-luck American drug addict, gambler and self-styled thief par excellence who must kick his habit in order to retrieve his luck with a complexly planned Rivera casino heist. The convolutions are many, and the film is strong on writer-director Neil Jordan's atmospherics.
If anything, there's too much going on in this expansion, and by the end, you may wonder exactly what happened and how. Suffice it to say that a decoy operation figures in the planning. The best part of the film lies in the cleverness of Nolte's scheming with his band of accomplices.
"The Good Thief" is also dressed with the odd-looking and speaking Nutsa Kukhianidze as Anne, the eastern European woman in the stew who is rescued from life as a prostitute by Bob. She speaks phlegmatically to the point where her voice sometimes sounds as if it has been dubbed. She has a lean model's body and there's something compelling about her, perhaps because she is far removed from the cliched type one might expect to find.
Twins Mark and Michael Polish are also involved playing twins in the theft plans, and Tchéky Karyo portrays Roger, a cop who stalks Bob to find out what he is up to and also has some sympathy for him, since their cat and mouse relationship goes way back. The stakes are high; being caught will send Bob to prison for a long term that he cannot abide. The threat of violence lurks ominously as well. Others key in the cast include Saïd Taghmaoui, Gérard Darmon, Emir Kusturica Marc Lavoine, Ouassini Embarek and Ralph Fiennes in a special appearance as a vindictive art dealer.
With Nolte in top form, the film is easy enough to watch, but it doesn't rise to any great heights, and it makes me want to have another look at the lavishly praised Melville work.
A Fox Searchlight release.
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