THE GOOD THIEF (Neil Jordan, 2003) 50

Reviewed: April 3rd, 2003

I have no qualms about remakes in theory (even remakes of already terrific films if they're loose enough; some kid named Paul Thomas Anderson re-imagined Bob le flambeur as Hard Eight and improved upon it in a majority of ways); what I have a huge problem with, what I have much seething contempt for, is a movie like The Good Thief, which takes -- to put it as baldly as possible -- nearly every single thing that works in its predecessor and... breaks it. The magnitude of Neil Jordan's misconception, the sheer number of elements he rips from Bob le flambeur and then fucks up, is staggering. To begin with, he converts Bob from a suave gambler into a degenerate, two-bit junkie. Bad idea, since (A) It no longer feels like Bob really gives a shit about gambling which makes the ending lose all its veracity; (B) It hammers home the down-and-out subtleties of the original film, which poignantly turned Bob's cultivation against him, which made affecting the quiet nobility he manages to maintain despite the fact he's pretty much a loser. In The Good Thief Nolte is a hulking, serpentine, drugged-out, ostentatious beast but the original Bob has seen far worse than Nolte's incarnation ever did (since he served prison time) and yet he's still hanging on to some class, like a fallen, wannabe King who tries to keep his poker face so no one realizes that his throne was only made outta sticks.

How about Jordan's idea to amp up the convolution level tenfold by adding in an additional heist plotline that runs parallel to Bob's? Horrible idea (reason obvious, I presume; pointless convolution = bad, lucidity = good). What about throwing in elaborate, bloody murders and exploding fireballs to vacuously try and amp up the tension? Another horrible idea (which -- like most of Jordan's changes -- has the reverse effect from what's intended; instead of enhancing the excitement it just makes the proceedings dull). How about inserting two more characters into the fray, a pimp and a young druggie, who beat people up and threaten people and double cross people? Yet another terrible idea since it removes the focus from the vital, beating heart of Bob le flambeur's story (the tense, dramatic heart that PTA wisely recognized and expanded upon): the triangular relationships between a young man who idolizes Bob, his kinda-girlfriend and Bob himself. What has Jordan done instead? Why he's lessened the relationship, of course. He's made the younger kid almost completely irrelevant and very apathetic towards Bob. This is a -- needless to say -- horrible idea. How about Jordan's decision to make the younger kid's kinda-girlfriend Bob's kinda-girlfriend? Mark another tally in the horrible idea column. What about Jordan's idea to directly quote lines from Bob le flambeur's sublime ending but still change the action? Infuriating, detrimental idea. To add insult to multiple injuries he's taken the playful rivalry in Bob le flambeur between the cop tracking Bob and Bob himself and transmogrified it into a wobbly chunk of nothing. Scenes where the two men meet in a church -- and have a conversation quite similar to Pacino and De Niro's explosive detective/criminal coffee shop sitdown in Heat -- lack any of that movie's tension or anxiety. In Bob le flambeur -- unlike The Good Thief -- the cop and Bob are immediately established as age-old pals, though their relationship is far from clear cut. Bob saved the cop's life way back when and the cop never understood why. It's this apprehensive ambiguity -- lacking in Jordan's edition -- that gives the original's ending such a groovy bent.

What about Jordan's decision to change the tone of his film from the sometimes soft, sometimes comedic wistfulness of Bob le flambeur to often deliberate sternness? Not necessarily a bad idea... if Jordan had been set on this tone. Instead he gets confused and periodically inserts cringe-worthy gags like bodybuilding thieves who've had faulty sex-change operations and are scared of spiders. {NB. It's become apparent to me that people like m'da ("suave gravity of Jean-Pierre Melville's existential thriller") and Charles Taylor ("That devil-may-care spirit is entirely Neil Jordan's contribution. You won't find it in Bob le flambeur; its doomed romantic fatalism feels like an inevitable and predictable sop to the genre.) think I mistakenly have the films' tones reversed. They are inexplicably convinced Jordan has taken Bob le flambeur's stern drama and made it effervescent, neglecting that Bob le flambeur is definitely not fatalistic nor a thriller; it's infinitely closer in tone and spirit to, say, Shoot the Piano Player than Le Samouraï. Among Bob le flambeur's opening scenes, for instance, is a sequence set to xylophone featuring a street cleaner not recognizing Bob and Bob's subsequent disappointment as he longingly stares into a mirror and sardonically bemoans his lack of "a hood's face." To quote the ever reliable David Thomson: "Bob le flambeur was immensely influential in the way it recreated the ambience of the American thriller and yet encouraged spontaneous... shooting. Bob was a turning point for Melville himself... the romance was made astringent by the casual humor... and the pleasure at a world Melville made his own. There is a haphazard grace... that stems from the deliberate offhandedness with which [it was] made." Jordan's contribution my ass.}

All that said, I can't deny the filmmaking is sumptuous, the locations are intoxicating and no one who cares about movies can resist sequences with Nick Nolte smoking and strolling through Monte Carlo's glittery nightscape while solitary Leonard Cohen tunes moan on the soundtrack. No one who cares about movies can, for that matter, resist any performance from Nolte (even one that's as awkward as his performance here). And as ever, I'm heavily predisposed to like movies involving gambling or heists; to create a movie starring one of my favorite actors with both these elements and still make me unable to recommend the flick is a difficult feat indeed.

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