Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

The Brothers Bloom
2008
*
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi, Maximilian Schell, Robbie Coltrane

The Bloom brothers have been con artists from an early age, but now the disenchanted younger brother wants out of the game. As their last job, he agrees to swindle a young and rich heiress, but his romantic feelings complicate the matters. The problem with most con movies is that while it's possible to enjoy a well-orchestrated sleight of hand, it's difficult to care about the duplicitous characters. The good ones (The Sting and House of Games) are gripping, entertaining, and surprising. The bad ones (Ocean's Twelve and The Spanish Prisoner) are lazy and self-indulgent. Rian Johnson's follow-up to Brick is another empty stylistic exercise. It begins as an irritatingly whimsical farce, which made me squirm rather than laugh. The somber second half, which concentrates on the elaborate scam and its repercussions, is boring and interminable. If there is one thing I've learned from all the con movies, it's that I shouldn't believe anything I see. However, Johnson takes this a bit too literally. His caper comedy is set in the real-world in the present day, and then again it's not. It includes people who have names like Bloom Bloom and Bang Bang, and it's set in a modern world where men wear fedoras, cross the Atlantic on a ship and travel across Europe by steam engine. And the actors playing the brothers, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, are about as likely to come from the same parents as Danny De Vito and Arnold Schwarzenegger.