Thriller 'Thief' is suave and playful

THE GOOD THIEF -- *** -- Nick Nolte, Nutsa Kukhianidze, Tcheky Karyo, Said Taghmaoui, Gerard Darmon, Mark Polish, Michael Polish; rated R (sex, nudity, violence, drugs); see "Playing at local movie theaters" for complete listing of local theaters.

Don't worry if you can barely understand a word Nick Nolte says for the first 30 minutes of "The Good Thief" -- that's part of the gag.

In this suave and playful remake of the 1955 French thriller "Bob le Flambeur," Nolte plays a mumbling, heroin-addicted career thief named Bob, who must kick the habit if he's going to pull off one last heist. With his hair dyed the color of mud and his skin barely hanging onto his face, the actor looks as if he's just been run over by a train. The movie becomes the story of a man who -- literally and figuratively -- has to clean himself up.

The sly joke at the center of the movie, of course, is that Bob's cleaning-up requires him to be more crooked than ever (the heist is so elaborately constructed that it accounts for the fact that one of Bob's cohorts will try to rat him out).

In Monte Carlo, Bob learns of a casino that purports to have priceless works of art on the wall. Except the casino is lying: The paintings on display are fakes; the real ones are locked in a vault across the street. Bob wants to fool the casino into thinking that he's going to steal the fakes, and the police into thinking that he's going to rob the casino's safe (or maybe it's the other way around) - - while he'll actually be off stealing the real paintings.

"The Good Thief" is directed by Neil Jordan, and in addition to being his loosest and most enjoyable work since "The Crying Game," it also falls neatly in line with Jordan's stock obsessions. As in some of his other films, "The Good Thief" introduces us to a corrupted hero, and then watches as he sets off on a screwy journey toward redemption. Bob's heist makes him a kind of avenging angel -- robbing from the rich, who deserve it anyway, because they're so boorish as to keep great works of art locked up.

Jordan is a little sloppy with the pacing of the early scenes, and he made a serious misstep in casting Nutsa Kukhianidze, a young Georgian actress with a honking voice and almost no emotional range, as the prostitute Bob wants to save.

But the movie is so light and casually tossed off that it's hard to get into a huff about a few shortcomings. The cinematographer is Chris Menges ("Mississippi Burning"), who takes us on a splendid visual journey -- shooting the early scenes in dark, smoky colors, and then bathing the final 30-minute heist in warm and enveloping light. And Nolte reminds us how terrific an actor he can be. His weather-beaten looks suggest a life lived on the edge; his physical grace and martini-dry line readings suggest an untouchable panache -- to the movie-star manor born. The tension created therein forms the heart and soul of this sweet-natured fable. He even learns to speak (sort of) without mumbling.

"The Good Thief" is rated R for simulated sex and sexual contact, female nudity, violence (gunplay) and some drug content (talk of drug use). Running time: 108 minutes.

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