In Bob Rafelson’s Blood & Wine, Alex Gates (Jack Nicholson) seems to have everything. He owns a first-class wine shop in Miami, drives a new BMW convertible, and sleeps with a sexy Latin mistress on the side. Alex is a sleazy guy, the kind of person who is always looking for the easy way out. He does everything possible to ignore his wife, while using the small fortune left after her first husband’s death to finance his expensive habits.

When Alex’s funds begin to run dry, he panics. Alex turns to his safe-cracking poker buddy Victor Spansky (Michael Caine) for help. Together, Alex and Victor devise a plan to steal a million-dollar diamond necklace from one of Alex’s richer clients. Caine is so convincing as a down-and-out crook dying of tuberculosis that you’re sure he won’t live long enough to make another movie. Victor knows he is dying and hopes his last heist will allow him to spend the rest of his days living in comfort. He is eager to go along with the plan, which seems simple enough, without ever expecting the many ways it will go wrong.

“The interesting thing about rich people is they’re so cheap,” Victor tells Alex. “They’ll spend $1.3 million on a necklace with diamonds the size of chocolates and lock it in a tin box from Sears.”

Stealing the necklace is no problem for the duo: Alex is an experienced liar, and Victor is a master at opening safes. It’s not until they have the jewelry that things get more complicated. They need to sell it in New York, and Victor—who has been to jail in the past and is wanted by the police—fears that he will be recognized.

Alex’s wife realizes that he is about to abandon her just as he finishes packing. In a fit of anger, she beats him nearly to death, grabs his suitcase (unaware that the necklace is inside) and flees with her son Jason (Stephen Dorff) to a friend’s houseboat. While in hiding, Jason discovers the diamond necklace in his mother’s suitcase. As soon as one of the local jewelers gives him an estimate of the necklace’s value, Jason figures out that it is stolen property. In the meantime, Alex and Victor are busy trying to track down the necklace. By the end of the movie, Alex has transformed from a selfish jerk into a heartless killer willing to sacrifice anything to get the necklace back, including his family.

The movie’s success rests almost entirely on the cast. As a long-time friend of director Bob Rafelson, Nicholson accepted the role of Alex Gates, a genuine loser whose luck keeps getting worse. Alex’s character is different than many of his other roles because it does not require the type of over-the-top performance that Nicholson gives in Batman and A Few Good Men. Nicholson’s Alex is as a passionate man with strong, forceful emotions. Playing the part of Alex’s wife Suzanne, Judy Davis (Absolute Power) captures the helplessness of being locked in a loveless marriage. When she runs away from Alex, her character is set free by a spark of independence. Watching the way his stepfather treats his mother, Jason’s anger rises towards him. At the same time, he finds himself drawn towards Gabriella, the woman his father plans to run away with. As Gabriella, Jennifer Lopez (the title character in Selena) plays a sultry illegal immigrant who finds herself tempted by the value of the stolen necklace.

Early in the movie, it’s difficult to see who the hero is. Alex is clearly the main character, but he doesn’t seem to have any of the admirable characteristics of his stepson Jason. We can sympathize with his pathetic attempt to change his life for a while, but we soon realize that it is Jason’s honesty and attachment to his family that we should admire. At one point, Suzanne runs her car off the road while Alex and Victor pursue her. Alex crawls into the flipped car, and we expect him to save his wife by dragging her to safety. Instead, he frisks her, searching even inside her underwear for the necklace while she lies dying. At that moment, Alex crosses the line. Nothing is sacred to him any longer.

The story is convincing because it is not glamorized; the action is thoughtless and spontaneous. The film’s main drawback is that it insists on a warped idea of poetic justice. With the exception of the ways that the ‘bad guys’ are punished, the movie portrays the events as they realistically might have happened. All of the characters in Blood & Wine face a moment when they must choose whether to keep the necklace for themselves or to return it to its proper owner. For some reason, going to jail and losing everything is not punishment enough for making the wrong decision. Instead, the movie insists that greed be avenged through humiliation and violence. The key to understanding Alex and Victor is seeing how pathetic they are. They have given up everything for the necklace, and their own failure should be punishment enough. Unfortunately for Blood & Wine, movie-goers will leave the theater thinking about what happens to Alex rather than the crazy twists the story takes before reaching its climax.