Nobody Talks About: The Good Thief
A Friday series of the obscure and overlooked; a quirky recommendation for the weekend...
This is often my favourite kind of post I read from other people - I love the discovery aspect, so I hope this is useful to you.
However, half the fun of this kind of stuff is in discussion. So…
Tell me if I am crazy? Or if I am not alone. Is this old news to you? I’d like to know.
If you’re looking for a heist movie, The Good Thief is more fun than Oceans 11 - and I’m a huge Soderbergh fan. It’s also an improvement on Bob le Flambeur - the film it was based on. And I’d watch it over Mona Lisa any day (a drive-by burn of three great films, Melville style).
Nick Nolte is Bob, a heroin-addicted retired thief planning one last job. But Tchéky Karyo keeps getting in the way, and so does the young girl he’s unwittingly having to father. Or is she taking care of him?
Stealing paintings from the Monte Carlo casino is almost a side quest. Hanging out with these characters is the point. It’s two hours on the Riviera with a group of people in the world of a heist movie, actors at the top of their game suspended timelessly between hyperrealism, nouvelle vague and silliness. We all know what happens in a heist movie and everyone is in on the joke. Emir Kusturica is hilarious as Vladimir. Karyo is almost bemused at his inability to stop Nolte because he seems to be method acting his life, shuffling and mumbling his way to greatness. Then there’s that cameo from Ralph Fiennes with some brutally hilarious one liners.
I saw this film first at the AMC in Times Square when it came out. It was fine. I was underwhelmed. But I bought the DVD (as you did back then, to build out a bit of a library of certain filmmakers). And I watched it again, and enjoyed it more. And watched it again, and kept watching it. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve seen this film. I love this film.
Tarantino describes certain films as Hang Out movies. Films that are less about plot or thrills and more about spending time with the characters. This is absolutely one of those. As soon as you stop worrying about the thriller aspect of the heist (because you know whats going to happen) then the joy of everything else starts coming to the fore.
It’s a love letter to the nouvelle vague. Jordan puts it together, executing freeze frames and jump-cuts like Truffaut and Goddard. Chris Menges's great photography transports you to the Riviera capturing that glitzy seediness, the leather faced men with heavily made up women, the gambling and the vice. It’s slickly put together by the same editor as Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Then there’s the requisite smokey jazz of Neo-noir heist films. But this is no gritty expose… this is all soufflé fantasy and fun.
It might not make the great movie lists, it’s not high art, but it does something that cinema is uniquely good at: taking you to a different world.
And who doesn't want to spend two hours on the French Riviera hanging out between Cannes and Nice with some great characters?