The Brothers Bloom (2009)
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, and Rinko Kikuchi
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 113 min.
by Brian Eggert
Reviewed:
05/31/2009
Original Release Date:
05/22/2009
Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom is a film about con men that makes the fatal mistake of concerning itself more with the details of its ongoing confidence game than with the characters, drama, and love story at the center. Directed with admirable style and profundity, complete with imbedded symbolism galore and delightful nonstop energy, the scheme ultimately gets ahead of the narrative and leaves the audience feeling cheated of any real connection.
Since they were children, brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody) have conned people out of their money. Stephen masterminds the labyrinthine plans; Bloom acts them out, always performing in a part written by his brother. But he’s never quite sure who he is outside of his preconfigured role. After he leaves his brother in an attempt to find himself, Bloom is drawn back when Stephen and his Japanese cohort Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi) propose that ever-discussed “last job”, which involves swindling sheltered New Jersey heiress Penelope (Rachel Weisz) out of her millions. Trouble is, Bloom falls for Penelope, like he often does when The Mark is a woman. Is the love real? He doesn’t know, and the twisting plot doesn’t much care.
Movies about The Con follow a standard formula, and their inventiveness within that formula dictates their success. Each adheres to a three or four step outline: 1) The Grifters, wherein we meet the conmen, their Mark, and their scheme is devised; 2) The Con Game, where the deceit unfolds; 3) The Twist, where the Con doesn’t quite work out the way it’s supposed to, with either The Mark catching on, or the Con taking unpredictable turns. Now, the film can end there, but only the best films about The Con continue. At this point, the film can either use those characters to imbed the audience in the film’s underlying drama, or The Con can trick us again and again, and leave us awed from the level of deception at work. And only the very best pictures do both.
The risk when trying to con an audience is losing them after they’ve been conned. If we follow a story, and then suddenly the story turns on us, a poor film can detach us from it—from then on, we’re watching just to find out what happens, not because we’re engrossed. Consider examples from David Mamet’s oeuvre, such as House of Games or The Spanish Prisoner; they always take the audience into unexpected realms, but always in ways that tighten the knot around the viewer. What a great movie won’t do is sacrifice its affectiveness and effectiveness by involving the audience more in “what happens” versus the dramatic implications.
Unfortunately, The Brothers Bloom makes that very mistake. What’s more, its oh-so-close failure is aching, since Johnson’s lively characters are interesting, amiable types that we want to know better, but never can because of the distance created by the scenario’s reliance on ongoing double-crosses. Never has there been a film where the dynamic characters are so alive within a plot than doesn’t do them justice. Weisz plays a vigorous, adorable sort that’s never known human contact; her Penelope collects hobbies just for something to do, and thus seems to know just about everything. When she comes alive, it’s a joy for the viewer; except the dreary brother roles, always aloof and distant, never make their intentions clear, reducing Weisz’s role as a result. Her character seems so capable of lending Bloom and Stephen some clarity within their “greatest conmen in the world” personas, but doesn’t, even though the film keeps suggesting she will. All the performances are admirable; none of them go anywhere but in a circle.
After Johnson’s fantastic 2005 debut Brick, which effortlessly placed a film noir thriller in a high school setting, The Brothers Bloom is nothing less than a disspointment. Not that the lack of stylistic connectivity between the two is this film’s downfall. But where Brick seems so self-assured while innovating on its genre, this film feels desperate. Shot on beautiful locations ranging from Montenegro to Prague to Bucharest, Johnson presents some wonderful eye candy; he adopts an approach that feels like a Wes Anderson-David Mamet meeting of the minds and amalgamates their styles. Perhaps he’s trying a little too hard for eccentricity, making those visual metaphors a little too readable, dressing his characters in too much Euro-trash garb (the actors look like their acting like conmen, which is another terminal mistake in the production). The result is painfully close to being great, which is even more disappointing than if it were a complete disaster.
