Review of The Good Thief (2003) by Tim, R — 03 Jan 2005

Saw the Good Thief in the video store, saw Nick Nolte on the cover, picked it up, saw it was written & directed by Neil Jordan and figured it was worth a shot. And it was. A very pleasant surprise. It's a really nicely done heist movie. The excellent cast gives consistently good performances, the writing is very good, and it is beautifully shot. Definitely worth a view.

Which is more than can be said for View from the Top. When we moved to New Zealand, the way that video stores worked was fairly different than it was in the States. All of the rentals were for 7 nights - the only thing that was different between new and old releases was the number and the price for a 1 week rental. Most stores had some kind of bulk rental deal for older releases (7 for $10 or something similar). When Blockbuster made its way to Palmerston North, they had some of the new releases on one night rentals, but still retained the bulk deals.

The deal in Aus is similar. So if you are going for the bulk deal, occasionally you end up holding 6 movies in your hand, you've been around the aisles once, you want to go home, and you end up picking up some mildly appealing title from the end of the alphabet just to fill out the numbers.

Like View from the Top. Which was, on the whole, entirely forgettable. In trying really hard to come up with something, anything, nice to say, all I can think of is: Gwyneth Paltrow looks really nice in mini-skirts.

But I can't even hold that thought for very long because it is always crowded out by Nancy's question: why in the world did she take this role?

Note also the surprising and conspicuous absence of any mention at all of Mike Myers' performance...