The Good Thief

Neil Jordan

BY James KeastPublished Jan 1, 2006

A junkie thief at the end of his rope pulls himself together for one last score in The Good Thief, Neil Jordan’s loose remake of 1995 film Bob Le Flambeur (Bob the Gambler).

Nick Nolte stars with an entirely European cast as a heroin and gambling addicted gentleman who likes art, is kind to young girls in trouble, and carries himself with a certain dignity that lends an interesting element to what is essentially a familiar heist flick. Unlike, say, David Mamet, Jordan isn’t interested in how many screwball plot twists and double-crosses he can throw at you; he’d rather linger a little longer on the relationship between Bob and Anne (fab newcomer Nutsa Kukhianidze), a young Croatian runaway teetering on the edge of a life Bob knows all too well.

Although stylish and interesting, The Good Thief isn’t much more than an evening’s distraction with a juicy enough ending to make it feel satisfying. The DVD’s "making of" featurette is laughably thin and so are the deleted scenes, but commentary by Jordan, in which he chats amiably about how he stole from and mutated the original into his own version is quite engaging. (Alliance Atlantis)

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