The Good Thief film review

certificate_15

THE GOOD THIEF

Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) writes and directs this loose remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's classic crime thriller Bob Le Flambeur.

The Good Thief will remind modern audiences of Soderbergh's recent remake of Ocean's Eleven, with its team of cons trying to steal from beneath the noses of casino bosses and the police. Jordan's film is far more gritty and hard-hitting, anchored by a tour-de-force central turn from Nick Nolte as a risk-taker haunted by terrible demons.

Veteran master thief and gambling addict Bob Montagnet (Nolte) has been left penniless on the French Riviera by a spectacular losing streak at the card tables and horse racetrack. Even his once loyal mistress - the roulette wheel - has turned against him. Bob tries to numb the pain with alcohol and cocaine, which invariably leads him into even greater debt and fights with local hard men.

During one such scuffle at a packed nightclub, Bob rescues teenage prostitute Anne (Nutsa Kukhiani) from her thuggish pimp Remi (singer Marc Lavoine), and takes the girl under his wing. Soon after, just as Bob is at his lowest ebb, gambling partner Raoul (Gerard Darmon) offers Bob a tantalising proposition: the daring heist of a casino in glamorous Monte Carlo.

Bob is lured out of retirement to orchestrate the plan, going cold turkey to escape his drug addiction and then calling together a team of experts to break into the vault, including an electronics genius (Emir Kusturica) with a passion for rock music, and identical twins (Mark and Michael Polish) who work in the casino.

The target is not the casino's daily takings but a number of priceless Picassos and Cezannes located elsewhere within the building. Bob's cunning plan involves hoodwinking the police into believing the robbery is aimed at the casino's vaults. However, a mole within the operation has already tipped off a local detective Roger (Tcheky Karyo) to Bob's true intentions. Will the heist be one gamble too far for the old master, or does he have one final ace up his sleeve?

Nolte is astonishing in the lead, slowly peeling back the layers of self-pity and excess which have transformed his chancer into a broken man. By the time he hits Monte Carlo, dressed snappily in a tuxedo with Anne on his arm, Bob looks like a completely different man and we savour every turn of the card and throw of the dice as he woos Lady Luck back into his corner.