The Good Thief (2002) Reviews

• Nolte as a good actor? He is very good.

  jdesando2003-04-11

  In `The Good Thief' Nick Nolte plays Bob Montagnet, a down-but-not-yet-out Bogie, a very bright thief, and a heroin addict. Natsa Kukshianidge's femme fatale, Anne, is a 17-year old Bacall. It's the south of France--Nice and Monaco-- and it's time to relieve Monte Carlo of some precious paintings. Picasso is the model for Nolte's scamming talents: Picasso's conflicted painting of a woman with 2 sides to her face is the appropriate analogy for the duality of the young girl, both innocent and depraved, and Nolte's gambler, good and bad as the title suggests. Picasso's being accused of stealing from everyone adds to the allusive charm. The caper involves a Judas deceiver to support director Neil Jordan's frequent Christian motif (Remember `Jude' in "Crying Game"). The ‘crucifixion's' good thief, Nolte's thief, is good to the young Anne by saving her from the pimp. Jordan again joins an unlikely couple (Consider Fergus and Dil in "CG"), here a father figure with an errant daughter. The winding roads of the Mediterranean shoreline are also fitting metaphor for Nolte's tortuous path to redemption. The requisite drying-out scenes, where Bob handcuffs himself to the bed and rejects Anne's offer of sexual freedom, are effective realism in an otherwise stylish film that eschews clarity and ingenuity in favor of some character development and much atmosphere. The scenes at the casino are smoother than "Casablanca's," slicker than James Bond's, and lighter than "Croupier's." When Bob and Anne begin their end of the elaborate heist by challenging the house odds, there is little to worry about their losing but much about the philosophy of gambling, of going all the way regardless of the outcome. However, Jordan's take on slick thievery is not really different from that found in the recent `Confidence,' `Heist,' or `Ocean's Eleven.' The denouement is hardly logical or dramatically tight: Does an ex-thief go clean? Does he save his Mary Magdalene? Does he stop his losing streak and addiction? Does he pull off the heist? None of this is the point. Bob as a "good thief " is all that matters. And Nolte as a good actor? He is very good.

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• Stylish and Satisfying

  dromasca2003-09-19

  'The Good Thief' is the best film Neil Jordan did since 'Mona Lisa' almost two decades ago. It is a classical and well written robbery story, complex enough to catch the interest, simple enough for the spectator to follow and enjoy, and with the special twist at the end that makes a good script. The main character fits Nick Nolte like life, I can imagine only Humphrey Bogart doing better in this role. There are a few other memorable characters, with the Georgian (from the other Georgia) Nutza Kukhianidze promising to become soon a star if she has enough luck to continue to work with good directors and scripts. The cinematography has a special quality, with final stills after each shot, enhancing a good digital camera work. I also liked the soundtrack, it's a mix of classic, jazz and even Leonard Cohen sounds right for a change. 8/10 on my personal scale - certainly worth seeing.

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• With Subtitles, Better Than Bob

  ccthemovieman-12006-01-14

  This was a re-make of the 1955 film noir, "Bob LeFlambeur," which I also own. That was black-and-white and made in France while this is 2002 movie in color with English-speaking actors. Usually I'll take the original over the re-make but not in this case....with one major consideration. In order to like this film, I had to play the DVD with the English subtitles on because many of the accents were just too tough to decipher and if you can't understand the dialog, it gets a bit frustrating. The story is confusing enough as it is, so, if you have a similar problem as I had, play this with the subtitles. If there is such a thing as colorful film noir, this would be it, with many splashes of the neon nightlife of France, inside and outside. Story-wise, if you're confused you are not alone. After two viewings, I still haven't totally figured out the twist at the end. The dialog tries to be snappy mid-40s Raymond Chandler stuff and sometimes it's great, other times it's affected. Overall, however, it 's fun. Nick Nolte delivers most of the clever lines. The young girl in here, Nutsa Kukhianidze, is intriguing new face, as was the case with Isabelle Corey in "Bob." This movie gets a lot of negative reviews from professional critics. Don't trust them; give this a look.

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• Watchers and Copies

  tedg2003-04-18

  Spoilers herein. Some time back, Soderbergh took time from his glossy projects to remake `The Limey.' It was a copy but so much more: it was a film about the previous film. This was emphasized and leveraged by shots that were overlain on shots, echoing and restating motion. Very clever, but too intellectual for most I guess. To hoots and catcalls, Van Sant remade `Psycho' in a more reverential way, but the amazing Julianne Moore led a self-referential revolt of the actors to create an annotative subtext. So when you watch the film, you see three films at once: the excellent original, the slightly larger `copy' and subtle embellishments on the original in the copy as a private dialog between the viewer and actor. Now comes the most elaborate, excessive and fun of this type of hyper-irony. Neil Jordan has played with us before, even when his chancy films didn't succeed. `In Dreams' has some of the most chilling scenes I know, the underwater architecture of a parallel world. `End of the Affair' was multidimensionally self-referential, employing -- even stretching! -- the amazing Mrs Moore's ability to inhabit several persons in the same body. Even `Vampire' echoed Tarkovsky's notion of constructed memory (down to the use of Domiziana Giordano as `mother'). This is a copy of a precious film. It is in fact all about copies: the paintings, the copy of Bob in Paulo, how he manipulates the idea that he will copy his past crimes, the copy of the vault in the Russian's warehouse, even the copy of the copies on its walls, the twins, the copy of Philip in Phillippa, the false copy of the plan planted in the snitch. Lots of copies, lots of similar references to repetition. Also lots of focus on observation: the cop, the cameras, the remote computer trick and the inclusion in the cast of three filmmakers noted for their `observational' stance. Everyone is watching someone else. Most of all, we have Anne as the proto-observer who anchors our own narrative perspective. She is us: eager for sense, visiting a new world, unsure of how things will unfold, magnetically drawn to the `real thing' despite its attendant obsessions and fictions. This young actress is one of the luckiest I remember, having so much attention paid to her by makers of the film. The whole enterprise is about her (and us). Nolte knows this. He's not at the level of Moore, but he sure as heck knows what's going on and supports it. Along the way, there is copious color, fakeout stories, flatout love of the camera and style of life -- a pleasant conflation of rich living from one man's letting the world define him, together with a masterful manipulation of us in our defining of the character and film based on past film memories and templates. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.

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• Classy, gritty, multi-accented heist flick

  noralee2003-04-20

  "The Good Thief " is a classier one-last-great-heist film than "Ocean's 11," in a more exotic Riviera locale with grittier repartee and well-worn actors with many different accents. The long-time camaraderie among crooks and cops is comfortably reflected, though much back story has to be stretched to explain why American Nick Nolte fits in. Based on a 1955 French film I haven't seen, "Bob le flambeur," I don't know how much Neil Jordan changed from the original. It has the kind of twists and turns that has strangers in the audience turning to each other at the end to compare notes. Really odd that Ralph Fiennes's cameo is uncredited, as he's terrific, and much more effective here as a leonine cynic than as a romantic in "Maid in Manhattan." Most creative transsexual character since "Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert" and neat use of the Polish brothers. Jordan resists another male fantasy until the end when Nolte finally pairs up with the seductive teen-ager who conveniently announces she has just turned 18 so he can't add statutory rape to his rap sheet. Oh, so then we're supposed to feel happy ever after. Very nice world-weary multi-lingual soundtrack, including Serge Gainsburg and Leonard Cohen.

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