Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Strangelove, DarthSiskel, and now Truthgame... like I said, it’s a chatroom bonanza today here on the front page. Truthgame’s had a look at a film I’m very curious about, since I love a good Neil Jordan film.
Of course, for every BUTCHER BOY or CRYING GAME or MONA LISA, we get our fair share of HIGH SPIRITS and WE’RE NO ANGELS.
So which Neil Jordan is this one, Truthgame?
The Good Thief
I love Neil Jordan. The Crying Game, Michael Collins and The Butcher Boy are not only fantastic films – they’re important and inspiring and all the things great films should be.
So back in summer 2000 when I hear he’s planning a remake of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1955 film “Bob Le Flabeur” I naturally get very excited. Not because I particularly know the original (I saw it years ago and don’t remember it well) but because its Neil Jordan with a decent budget making a heist movie.
3 Titles Later, (The Honest Thief, Double Down and now The Good Thief) and 12 months after its original delivery date has past and after $450m was pocketed in cinemas alone by Oceans 11 – we finally get Neil Jordan’s “The Good Thief.”
In 2 words the film is:
Dog Poo.
Utter Shite
Criminally Bad
Embarrassing Folly.
And somehow, this is the work of people who are at the top of their professions.
The Story
Nick Nolte plays Bob. Bob is addicted to 2 things – Heroin and Gambling and basically a total loser. But – everyone loves Bob, especially Paulo and Remi and Bertram and every other character with a one word name – Even “Roger” played by Tcheky Karyo, the local cop who would love to arrest him for a large scale robbery that “Bob” has been known to have done before – even he loves Bob.
So… a friend of his tells him that a new casino has opened and in a big to attract more highbrow gamblers has brought numerous works of modern art to garner its walls. The paintings are all fake. The real paintings are in a house nearby. The logic is – if you steal the paintings – the casino can’t report them stolen as if their gamblers new the paintings in the casino were fake – no one would want to gamble there.
We know “Bob” is refined because he has a Picasso on his wall and therefore has good taste! He takes the painting to irriputable art dealer – Ralph Fiennes… (who has 2 scenes and I hope only did the film so to try a cockney accent) Fiennes fronts him the money for the crime and off he goes.
The first thing Bob does is go cold turkey. He sweats out his addiction and 2 nights later and after one overhead shot of him vomiting into a bucket – he’s apparently fine and ready to be a robber. He then assembles a team of strange characters and off they go… We have a transvestite body builder with tits who is scared of spiders. We have a hooker with a heart of gold (who is the finest example ever of a functioning teenage crackwhore – ie she never seems to need a hit and has good skin) who falls for Bob – as everyone else does or already has – and basically is there to show her tits in one scene, repeat other characters lines reguarly and betray them all by accident…
And so we all head towards a midnight robbery of a house next to a casino…
The ending has no surprises… But neither does any other part of the film.
It’s all very dull…
My Opinion
One of the key things to know about making cool films and Tarantino and Soderbergh seem to have grasped is – don’t try too hard. If you try to be cool invariably you fail. Everyone in this film tries to hard. Both in front and behind the camera. The script is plainly plotted and has no suspense or thrills. The dialogue is awful. Like some sub Mamet banter the dialogue is clichéd and with the euro pudding of actors assembled sound like phonetic read through’s – not performances… and certainly not what you would expect from these characters. Again – everyone was trying too hard.
Produced by Steve “thank god Neil Jordan is loyal to me” Woolley (the man who abandoned Nik Powel when Palace Pictures went under. (read the excellent book “The Egos Have Landed” for a great account of the rise and fall of a great English production company behind Mona Lisa and The Crying Game)
Chris Menges was Director of Photography who has won 2 Oscars for The Mission and The Killing Fields and has recently done excellent work on Michael Collins and the underrated masterpiece – The Pledge… Here – although I’m not sure at whose behest – the film is full of Dutch tilts… and a whole bevy of tricks stolen like mistimed shutters and Step Printing. Not since the appalling Battlefield Earth have I so detested the use of Dutch tilts. Mike Roberts, one of the worlds best camera operators who was a regular for Neil Jordan and Chris Menges sadly died during the production of the film “Chocolat” and his work was desperately missed in this film. The lighting is nice. Chris Menges blends early morning blues with warm glows from artificial practical lights – very, very well… That’s his thing just like Darius Khondji’s “thing” is a velvet texture and crushed blacks achieved through lab processes.
The locations are good with Nice looking suitably sleazy and I even recognize a few places from that town. Costumes are OK… nothing that stands out as either appropriate or wrong and then we have the editing.
No more freeze frames. Ever again please. Don’t try it ever again. Tony Lawson and Neil Jordan should be beaten with nail studded sticks for failing to succeed here. If ever you need an example of too much technology at a filmmaker’s disposal it’s not Attack of the Clones… It is this. Most scenes are concluded with an exceptionally irritating 4 – 8 freeze frame, as if to punctuate the scene. An interesting idea – achieved with none of the grace, timing and planning ideas like that need to work.
French hip hop sounds cool. I don’t speak French so for all I know they’re rapping about queues to buy vegetables… But it sounds great. La Haine and recently Baise-Moi were greatly amplified by the power of their French hip hop soundtracks. Neil Jordan is first filmmaker ever to put French hip hop into a film and fuck it up. Very soon in I was longing for middle of the road, easy listening rock soundtrack that as a cliché you expect from a middle aged filmmaker. The normally excellent Elliot Goldenthal is underused and after his work with Neil Jordan on Interview with the Vampire and Michael Collins especially – his under use is almost a crime.
The tone of the film is all over the place. Never thrilling, never exciting and is very busy telling a very simple story… Scenes of Nick Nolte’ going cold turkey should have set tone for the film – hard boiled and edgy… instead he makes the quickest recovery from heroin addiction in movie history… The script doesn’t have dialogue – more like sound bites! And the Heist itself is practically a non-event…
Neil Jordan’s next film is supposed to be Borgia – a very bloody period epic. I know they’re dealing with budget problems at the moment but as far as I know it’s scheduled to shoot next spring. I hope they get their act together – both financially and creatively…
It’s not the worst film ever made. Nor is it the worst film I’ve seen this year – but with talent involved I just expected so much better and that amplifies the disappointment.
The Good Thief – 3/10
Keep on watching em’ - Even when they’re bad…
Truthgame
Wow. I didn’t realize it was a remake of BOB LE FLABEUR. That takes some pretty big balls, especially if you end up not pulling it off. Now I’m dying to see what Jordan’s made of this thing...
"Moriarty" out.
