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Never trust a crack whore. Even a French crack
whore. Especially a French (Freedom?) crack whore. Sure, they
might have a heart of gold (what Freedom Crack Whore doesn’t?).
She would never do anything to intentionally hurt you or your
friends, but she’s a crack whore. You just can’t
trust her. You don’t tell her your secrets, you don’t
let her stay in your flat, and, whatever you do, don’t
let her into your life if you are trying to pull off one last
score by robbing a Monte Carlo casino of all of its priceless
paintings. God, if I had a nickel for every time I learned
that last one the hard way…
In the new Neil Jordan heist movie “The Good Thief”,
Nick Nolte plays Bob, a down and out junkie gambler (has Nick
Nolte ever been “up and in?") who is one losing
poker hand away from hitting rock bottom. He has been shooting
up, playing cards, and betting on the ponies in the south
of France for too long now, and the lifestyle is taking its
toll. With his lined face, gravelly voice scarred by too many
cigarettes, and a demeanor that suggests an agitated alcoholic
lemur on speed, Bob is a creation that only Nolte could pull
off. While the role of the “grizzled ex-con” is
practically a required character for any actor over the age
of 50, Nolte is one of the few who could play a junkie gambler
ex-con with no prior research. Come on, folks. We all heard
about how Nolte got arrested last year high on booze and crystal
meth. We’ve all blown up the picture of his mug shot
and pasted it on the ceiling over our beds. (What? I’m
the only one?) So, you can all understand my excitement at
seeing Nolte playing the role he was born to play.
And Nolte is great in this role. Don’t get me wrong.
It’s just that… I’ve seen him do this too many
times before. Nolte has always been old, slow, and haggard.
Hell, when he played Thomas Jefferson he made the great statesman
seem like he was about to sell the original copy of the Constitution
for a cheap bottle of wine. So seeing him play a junkie at
the end of his rope in “The Good Thief”, while entertaining,
was no real revelation. And Nolte (I’m not even going
to bother with the character’s name; Nolte will and forever
be just “Nolte”) didn’t even seem all that
addicted. When he decides to go back into the life for that
“one last score” it seemed about as difficult for
him as a bad case of indigestion.
Another thing I learned from watching “The Good Thief”:
all you need to do in order to get off junk is to handcuff
yourself to a bed and have a young French girl do a strip
tease on top of you. The girl, the aforementioned crack whore,
played with elbowey sexuality and grace by Nino Kukhanidze,
is one of the best things in the movie. She manages to make
her character’s European world-weariness and boredom
not seem, well, annoying. And, as anyone who’s ever spent
any amount of time with a Eurotrash crack whore can tell you,
that’s an impressive feat.
Once Nolte’s character is off the drugs and high on life,
he goes after that one last score. The plan for the heist
is a convoluted scheme involving priceless paintings (are
there any other kinds of paintings?), an un-crackable safe
(is there any other kind of safe?) in a Monte Carlo casino,
and a pair of Irish identical twins (are there any other kind
of Irishmen?). But, ultimately, the heist itself is unimportant.
This was disappointing to me, because I was really looking
forward to learning how to steal from a Monte Carlo casino.
Oh sure, Nolte and crew (including The Crack Whore, The Irish
Twins, and The Male-to-Female Transsexual) have a detailed
and complex plan, full of many twists and turns.
In the end, the way Nolte and crew achieve their goals is
by not robbing the casino. They don’t steal the paintings,
they don’t elude the cops, and they don’t even get
to spend the rest of their life on the lam. So I did not learn
how to steal priceless paintings from “The Good Thief”.
This is okay, I guess. I had already seen “The Thomas
Crown Affair”. And I learned something even more important:
I learned that director Neil Jordan has some serious gender
issues. Normally, I would hesitate to criticize Jordan’s
creative choices. This is a man who made the greatest movie
that you have never seen, the woefully underrated “The
Butcher Boy” (worth the price of the rental just to see
Sinéad O'Connor play The Virgin Mary). But every now
and then, a director will take on a project (in this case,
updating the classic French heist film “Bob Le Flambeur”)
and will just succumb to every bad instinct.
The movie’s attempts at “European Cool” just
proved to me that the French shouldn’t record rock music.
And what was with that Male-to-Female Transsexual Bodybuilder
who was an integral part of Nolte’s crew (played by real
life male-to-female transsexual bodybuilder Sarah Bridges)?
This is the third movie in which Jordan cast an actor who
was a male-to-female transsexual (the first two being Jaye
Davidson in “The Crying Game” and Tom Cruise in
“Interview with the Vampire”). I’m starting
to think this isn’t coincidence.
Neil, do you have something that you need to tell us? It’s
okay if you do. We won’t judge you; all we want is for
you to be happy.
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