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The Good Thief on DVD

Film // Jim // 19th September 2003

The recent remake of Oceans 11 was widely considered to be a very cool heist movie indeed.
In comparison The Good Thief is such an incredibly cool heist movie that it makes the Soderburgh/Clooney effort look like it was shot in a sauna somewhere in Egypt.

Nick Nolte stars as the titular Bob, a Franco-American master thief, burnt out by age, gambling and heroin addiction. Persuaded to take one big score from a casino in Monte Carlo, Bob gruffly barrels through a complex and absorbing plot with the police in close attendance.
So why is this film so cool?

Cool point 1
It is a re-make of a classic french film called Bob le Flambeur which I haven’t seen but admittedly sounds very cool.

Cool point 2
Nick Nolte re-defines the word gruff by looking like shite and delivering every line in a virtually inaudible grunting whisper, clearly not giving a fuck what the audience (or indeed the rest of the world) thinks.

Cool point 3
The hard man in Bob’s gang is a transsexual weightlifter who is scared of spiders.

Cool point 4
The superb Tchéky Karyo (the psychotic copper from Dobermann) is the policeman after Bob who actually quite likes him and drives him to his narcotics anonymous meetings.

Cool point 5
The whole thing is set around the south of France and Monte Carlo. Much cooler than the vulgar Las Vegas I think you will agree.

Cool point 6
In a huge method actor Fuck-You to the likes of De Niro, Nolte claims he got himself hooked on smack to help prepare for the role. He certainly looks rough and shakes in a most convincing manner, imagine a parkinson's victim using a road drill.

Cool point 7
The way it is edited makes you think that your DVD player is knackered for the first few minutes.

Cool point 8
All the stuff about Picasso reminded me of the Orson Welles curiosity F is for Fake.

In addition to the general sub-zero nature of the film, it looks superb, has an “interesting” soundtrack and forces the audience to pay attention due to a fast moving storyline and the fact that you can’t make out half of what Nolte is going on about:

"mumble, mumble...Picasso..mumble, mumble...roulette and prime numbers..mumble, mumble...eighty-million francs"

Superb.