At the start of this Rian Johnson film Stephen, the eldest of the Bloom brothers and played by Mark Ruffalo, says that the perfect con is one in which all parties get what they want.
As a child his first con is to contrive to get his brother Bloom (Adrien Brody) the girl of his dreams while making some cash. It involves telling a children's story which sets a fairy tale-esque tone aided by the old Eastern European shooting locations and larger than life characters such as sinister Diamond Dog (Maximillian Schell) and the silent and calculating con assistant Bang Bang (Rinko Kakuchi).
It is not your average con movie. Yes the cons are complex and clever giving the plot a roller-coaster feel but underlying it is a heart. Stephen the calculating, mastermind ultimately wants his sensitive-soul younger brother to have the 'and they lived happily ever after' ending with the woman of his dreams.
The woman in this case is the orphaned, isolated, eccentric millionairess Penelope, played by Rachel Weisz who is the target of one last con but whom Bloom falls for.
Blogger and journalist David Quinn in response to a tweet of mine said the trailer made him think Brothers Bloom was trying to ape a Coen brothers movie and yes there are shades of the Coen brothers in it, but there are also shades Baz Luhrman and Terry Gilliam too.
It sags a little about three quarters of the way through when it's quirkiness starts to get in the way of the pace of the story but overall it is clever, fun and satisfyingly heart-warming and I quite enjoyed it. Which was good really because there was a Q&A afterward the screening with Johnson.
There must have been a lot of aspiring film-makers in audiences because many of the questions were about getting the film made. Probably the most interesting anecdote he told was in response to a question about how Tom Cruise came to be listed in the credits. It turns out that Cruise was approached to play Stephen and Johnson spent several hours with him going through the script with Cruise offering suggestions for changes and improvements.
Johnson wouldn't be drawn on what he changed.
Oh and then there was the story about how they did the scene with the roller-skating three-legged cat, if you've seen the movie and really want to know drop me a line...
There's a good video interview with Johnson over at Collider in which he pretty much covers everything he talked about at the Q&A.
And this is what the professionals thought:
The Scotsman gave it two stars and thought it was clever but not clever enough allowing the kookiness to suffocate
HeyUGuys loved it but recognised: "Johnson’s filmmaking rest a lot on his films charming you and if you don’t give yourself over to them and get absorbed by them the artifice perhaps becomes too much of the focus."
Rotten Tomatoes has a rating of 65%
Metacritic gives it a rating of 55%
Comments