![]() The set-up in place, the crooks prepare for the big night. ![]() The authentic paintings hide in a secret vault, which the crooks plan to crack. How can a bunch of crooks swipe a bunch of paintings right off the walls? There’s no need: they’re all fakes. While Nolte plans to act as a decoy playing high stakes black jack on the big night, his fellow crooks will swipe the casino’s priceless collection of Picassos, Manets, and Gaugins. Planned for the eve of the Grand Prix, the plot is to lift priceless paintings from a fancy casino. With his cronies in tow, Bob plans two robberies, one fake and one real, one covering for the other. Nevertheless, Bob has a “reputation” as a gambler and a crook, and he is enticed into a double heist plot that will hopefully take him out of his losing streak. It’s hard to tell, however, whether his perspiration is due to his focused concentration or whether it results from wearing a heavy, black leather jacket in the middle of balmy Monte Carlo. Of course, Nolte deserves some credit for working so hard, even if all he works up is a sweat. But as he writhes and groans, handcuffed to his own bed, all that his overacting induces is eye rolls. He tries to be the brooding-but-angelic tough guy, and we’re supposed to feel pathos when he undergoes torturous heroin withdrawal. ![]() In the film, Nick Nolte plays Bob Matagnet, a retired junkie gambler, or as he calls himself, “a big loser, that’s all.” Nolte slumps through the film, squinting through the bloodshot slits that are his eyes. And plenty of it.Ī shameless remake of Jean-Pierre Melville’s New-Wave 1955 film “Bob Le Flambeur,” “The Good Thief” adds nothing to the original. Director Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game”) certainly recalls other heist flicks of the recent past, but “The Good Thief” has none of the charm or coolness of something like “Ocean’s Eleven.” What it does have is phoniness. It’s got all the ingredients: a slick, heroin-addicted crook (Nick Nolte) who’s down on his luck a sharp-tongued prostitute with a heart of gold (newcomer Nutsa Kukhanidze) a hot locale (Monte Carlo). “The Good Thief” tries hard to be a sophisticated heist flick.
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