A welcome face wherever Nice's well-mannered lowlifes gather, Nick Nolte's character in The Good Thief likes little and does even less. But what he does like—art, gambling, heroin—he likes passionately, and what he does (or used to do), he does extraordinarily well. A semi-retired thief, Nolte seems more than willing to play the part of the contented burnout, gambling until his money runs out, then shooting up until his drug supply is exhausted. Looking on adoringly, protégé Saïd Taghmaoui does little to interrupt the cycle, which has practically become part of the rhythm of the city. Even Nice seems to approve. Shot by writer-director Neil Jordan as a graceful nighttime riot of pink, blue, and green, it looks like a city-sized slot machine, with Nolte as a man prepared to play through even the nastiest losing streak. Loosely remaking Bob Le Flambeur, Jordan at first seems willing to raise the stakes of Jean-Pierre Melville's classic. Where Roger Duchesne's original Bob was possessed by a vague ennui, Nolte's apathy comes in a needle and appears to be on the verge of destroying him. Once the film introduces the possibility of a big score, however, Nolte's vocation quickly supplants his addiction. Of course, there's a girl in the picture, too: in this case, a hard, fragile, 17-year-old Bosnian refugee (Nutsa Kukhiani) who pairs off with Taghmaoui but keeps glancing Nolte's way. After all, why settle for a copy when the original is so close at hand? That's a thought Nolte shares, as he gathers a team to steal a vault full of priceless paintings from a Monte Carlo casino that lets skillful replicas overlook the gaming floor. It's almost as if Jordan's anxiety at remaking a masterpiece is manifest in the film itself. If that's the case, the nervousness isn't entirely misplaced, but he probably worries more than he should. In Nolte, he's found the ideal antihero, a man who knows he'll soon go the way of the jazz clubs and unfiltered-cigarette era that made him, and seems happy to not make a big deal of it. Jordan invests attention in even the most throwaway moments and marginal characters, and his care makes the film a sustained, low-key pleasure. It's disappointing only in that it keeps suggesting a more substantive film that never quite pokes out above the surface. But it's there, sometimes in those throwaway moments, as when Nolte explains to detective and friendly nemesis Tchéky Karyo how they need each other, or in the understated way his decision to take Kukhiani under his wing is preceded by his observation of another young woman riding the back of a motorcycle toward her inevitable doom. Nolte's character may lack the ability to repent, but like the heaven-bound Biblical good thief that gives the film its title, he knows there's a difference between salvation and damnation, even in a place where noise, bright lights, and easy pleasure obscure that distinction.