Film Reviews

Brothers Bloom

• Rating:
• Director: Rian Johnson
• Starring: Adrien Brody
• Details: US / 114mins (12A).

In his first film since his outstanding teen noir debut, Brick, writer-director Rian Johnson switches tact for this wacky tragic crime comedy romance caper - and therein lies the problem. Enjoyable and carefree it may be, it's amalgamation of styles and genres clash hard, as Johnson can't decide what kind of film he wants The Brothers Bloom to be.
Stephen (Ruffalo) and his younger brother Bloom (Brody) have been conning everyone since they were kids. After another typically elaborate con, the sensitive Bloom has had enough of Stephen's plays and wants out, feeling that he wants an "unwritten life". However, Stephen, as always, convinces Bloom for one last con: taking down the "eccentric, shut-in, rich bitch" Penelope (Weisz). Together with their mute sidekick Bang Bang (Kikuchi, Babel), they set about taking the heiress for a two million... But Bloom wasn't counting on falling for the charming Penelope.
Imagine Dirty Rotten Scoundrels remade by Wes Anderson - that's The Brothers Bloom in a nutshell. During the first hour, which works a lot better than the second, Johnson introduces his uncanny characters in a world where anything can happen, and plays around with reality: "this is a con, it isn't real" is a running motif. There's always something unexpected happening. This is the kind of quirky movie where Robbie Coltrane can appear as a pipe-smoking Belgian museum curator tracking down the conmen, and get away with it. Despite the contemporary setting, Johnson messes about with eras - the brothers dress like Bogart, the interiors are pure '40s. All this is wacky fun.
Then The Brothers Bloom switches in mood, travels down a serious route, asking the audience to take the characters seriously, and in the process loses what it worked hard to build up. The plot, played up until now with carefree abandon, gets bogged down in who is doing what and why and the characters don't have enough meat on their bones to carry the shift in pitch. As fun as they are, Wes Anderson's characters never feel like real people - they always felt 'written' and the same goes here. Weisz's Penelope is typical of oddball characters in oddball movies: they don't ring true. This is fine when the film was played at a high note, but when Johnson takes everything down a notch, she sticks out like sore thumb. When Bloom says, "she feels like one of your characters," it's tough to figure out if he's talking to Stephen or Wes Anderson. She is without doubt, however, the most entertaining character on show and steals every scene she's in.
Despite its bizarre nature and its twists and turns deliberately devised to second-guess expectations, The Brothers Bloom doesn't click together the way it should.

Review by Gavin Burke