LOOKING to cast an ageing American gambler, crook and hell raiser with a face slacker than a whore's drawers? First choice has to be Nick Nolte, who has been visited by more demons than Jesus in the desert wilderness.

So the gnarled gargoyle lines up for Irish director and screenwriter Neil Jordan's "re-conceived" update of Jean-Pierre Melville's 1955 crime thriller Bob Le Flambeur. With eyes as deep set as his rumbling, smoke-damaged drawl, Nolte is Bob Montagnet, a leathery, low-rent lounge lizard slinking about his adopted French home on the Cote d'Azur.

Down on his chips, cash flow dried up and in need of his next shot, this addicted sleazeball is part of the faded scenery in Nice and Monte Carlo.

As the redemptive title suggests, Nolte's Montagnet is a thief in the last-chance saloon, planning one last casino heist in movie tradition on the cold-turkey path to kicking smack. To call this painting-stealing scam a romp would be stretching the definition: The Good Thief is not sleek or slick like Steven Soderbergh's re-make of Ocean's Eleven. Instead, it is a treacle-sticky psychological thriller as sleazy and woozy and dark as Chris Menges' work behind the lens.

Where Soderbergh's characters were mere pawns in a well-oiled operation, here character study - always a Jordan strong suit - holds sway over the tortuous twists and turns of a plot that is hard to follow and swallow.

Add the exotic but bewildering variety of European accents, and the difficulty in turning Nolte's vocal emissions into decipherable words, and The Good Thief is laborious film noir rather than a decadent joy ride with a Gallic shrug.

Convoluted it may be, but there is one young dazzling jewel in the mire: the alluring newcomer Nutsa Kukhanidze. Difficult as it is, remember that name. She steals the show.

Updated: 10:01 Friday, April 04, 2003