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Good Thief, The
Fox Searchlight Pictures


6.3

based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 11 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for language, sexuality, drug content and some violence

Starring Nick Nolte, Tchéky Karyo, Saïd Taghmaoui, Gérard Darmon, Emir Kusturica, Mark Polish, and Ralph Fiennes

Inspired by the Jean-Pierre Melville classic "Bob Le Flambeur," Neil Jordan's clever, sexy caper features a complex plot full of copies and originals. (Fox Searchlight)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Neil Jordan Auguste Le Breton (screenplay Bob Le Flambeur) Jean-Pierre Melville (screenplay Bob Le Flambeur)
DIRECTED BY:	Neil Jordan
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 19, 2003 Video: August 19, 2003 Theatrical: April 2, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	110 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK / France / Canada / Ireland

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Nolte's gambler-bandit Bob Montagnet is a triumph of imagination, touched with electric existential poetry.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

This long shot pays off -- in spades. Not only has Jordan made a movie that's looser, hipper, freer and -- abetted by his great cinematographer, Chris Menges -- more sheerly beautiful to look at, he's also made the best movie of his career.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Nolte is not only made for the role, he's also rehearsed it in real life.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

One of Jordan's best films, and almost certainly in Nolte's top two percentile.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

There's a zest and brilliance in Neil Jordan's racy heist thriller The Good Thief that makes it almost intoxicating to watch.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

So smooth and satisfying it makes the similar "Ocean's Eleven" look like a game of three-card monte.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Nick Nolte plays a great shambling wreck of a wounded Hemingway hero in The Good Thief, a film that's like a descent into the funkiest dive on the wrong side of the wrong town.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Nolte’s charisma transforms Neil Jordan's The Good Thief from a vague, mildly exotic, character-driven caper flick to a soulful and engaging misadventure.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Bob is a marvelous creation--a faker who is also the genuine article. He’s the perfect hero for a movie about the world as one big scam.

Slate David Edelstein

For all the movie's pixilated transitions, fisticuffs, and hyper-alert climaxes at the roulette table, there's a kind of temperamental evenness that's perfectly in sync with the protagonist.

Variety Eddie Cockrell

Sure, it's all been done before, but seldom with this degree of vigor and panache.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The ultimate caper, a work of brazen ebullience.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Indeed, The Good Thief is a fairy tale, not just in the plotted fun of the heist and counterheist, or in the clever twist thrown in at the end, but in the grandiloquent myth, so passionately espoused by Melville, of the crook as a man of honor and elegance.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Melville's seedy characters and engrossing friendships are well preserved, thanks largely to strategic redeployment of his crisp dialogue. As revamped caper films go, this offers considerably more texture than Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's 11."

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

It's a nifty caper flick that also ponders the aesthetic nature of deception -- in other words, a solid work of craft that doubles as a little meditation on art.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's a sumptuous mood piece.

USA Today Mike Clark

For a movie that earns its R-rating for drug content and violence atop language and sexuality, it leaves you with the next thing to a mellow smile.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The actor is magnificent -- ravaged, desperate, aware -- and no more so than in a scene toward the end when Bob's cardsharp cool finally breaks. It's a risky scene, the one note of corn, but Nolte brings it home. Too bad the movie doesn't.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Cinema as jazz. More precisely, jazz traded by the likes of Charlie Parker, Billie Holliday, Chet Baker -- blurry, opiated, jagged with melancholy and stone cold beautiful.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A sparkling exercise in movie cool.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

With his haggard good looks and bearish presence, Nolte is the main event in this colorful three-ring circus of a heist picture.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The Good Thief is too spindly and unconfident for an actor of this bulk, yet without him it would curl up and die. [7 April 2003, p.96]

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Propelled by a soundtrack as diverse as its international gallery of thieves, Jordan's cheerfully scruffy neo-noir caprice even lays on the religious imagery with a palette knife and sweetens Melville's ending without seeming terminally sappy.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Jordan invests attention in even the most throwaway moments and marginal characters, and his care makes the film a sustained, low-key pleasure.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The trouble with all this is that it's thin movie tinsel that, while lovingly polished, never becomes more than tinsel. The Good Thief has a glib stylishness (the rapid freeze-frames at the end of scenes signify...nothing), yet it lacks a blast of reality to balance its fable.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

If The Good Thief isn't up to the work that inspired it, it's nevertheless fresh and distinct, a shot of citrus in a movie season far too often tasting of pablum.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Lovers of drama featuring quirky characters will find things to appreciate.

Film Threat Darrin Keene

Nolte looks like a man with one foot in the grave and nothing to lose. He single-handedly rescues this caper flick from its own mediocre storyline.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

In the end, what started off as playful becomes tedious.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The result is yet another remake that should send viewers scurrying to video stores for the original.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The Good Thief merely adds a new tinct to the pathos of Jordan's career. Once again we see a director who is better than anything he has so far done.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Though it ultimately recovers, too much of The Good Thief forgets about Bob, and in the process the movie loses much of its allure and vividness.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Nolte brings a raspy authority to the role, and director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) surrounds him with colorful characters.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Of the original and the remake, only one film feels authentic, and it's not The Good Thief.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

His movie (Jordan's) winnows the original's existentialist fable into a busy caper thriller, copping plot devices from Soderbergh's "Ocean's 11" and even straining to Wong Kar-wai its camera's way around the fleshpots of Nice. It's all pizzazz, and the pizzazz is all borrowed.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Promising as it seems in theory, everything in this new version, like Lena Lamont's image in "Singin' In the Rain," falls apart as soon as the talking starts.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's as French as a half-smoked Gauloise and, like a half-smoked Gauloise, it stinks.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.3 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Paul P. gave it a1:
Muddled plot, confusing editing, ridiculously bad, cliched dialogue, pretentious soundtrack ! A supposed homage to French New Wave ? I'm not a film student or even a film buff but if you want to see this sort of thing done well check out the film Diva from the early eighties.

Pat C. gave it a4:
Had all the elements of a great zinger, but the assemblage was muddled and flat.

Diana D. gave it a9:
One of the most visually romantic and stunning films I saw last year. The music is glorious, electic. Nolte's performance is one of his best.

A Leader gave it a 2:
Noltes performance is at times terrific. this despite the worst script and general execution of what might have been a halfway decent film. the director and production team must ask themselves if they can seriously be proud of this total abomination. the soundtrack must get a mention for being the most painful i have ever experienced - a mix of quasi ethnic drivel and embarrasingly inept ballads. should be given a wide berth.

Gino E. gave it a 6:
It's an interesting variation on heist movies. Neil Jordan tries to be as modern and different as possible. The soundtrack is picked from a variaty of French and Arabic songs. Cheb Mami is a good performer, but does he fit in this movie? Well, it's different anyway. The character acting vary from great (The good old Nolte) to very silly (Some of Nolte's heist members and 'the snitch'). But the overall product has some very fun things. Too bad the ending doesn't have the impact that the movie was building up to. But if heist-movies are your thing: This is almost mandatory.

T. P. gave it a 1:
Couldn't even make through half of this film. The acting was horrible and the dialogue cliched. I didn't care what happened to anyone or anything in this rip off of 100 different movies.

Good Thief, The Fox Searchlight Pictures

Good Thief, The
Fox Searchlight Pictures