Review

Review Date: 24-May-09
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

The Brothers Bloom (2009)

I feel somewhat bad about giving The Brothers Bloom a low rating. Unlike the new movie I branded "junk" last week, it represents an attempt at creativity by its writer and director, Rian Johnson. It also asserts that while unfortunate childhoods may start men down unhappy paths, adults can always choose new ways of living. That is wise advice, but its delivery is too artsy by half.

The effort to appear clever tinges every frame of The Brothers Bloom. It opens on a flashback with voice-over poetry showing how two orphans began their career as shysters before they reached their teens; or rather, how the elder brother Stephen began such a career and towed younger brother Bloom along with him. Jumping ahead 20 years, we find Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) still at it, orchestrating elaborate stings with the help of a mysterious mute partner (Rinko Kikuchi) and manipulating Bloom (Adrien Brody) as the front man. The end of their schemes is money, but Stephen approaches his work with the zeal of an artist. He loves watching reality bend to his invention.

Bloom, on the other hand, is depressed and tired and longs to inhabit a world not created by his brother. He ridicules Stephen's flair for drama and symbolism, a winking self-reference in a film stocked with vaudevillian touches and visual metaphors like broken statues of angels. After trying to slink off on his own, Bloom reluctantly agrees to one more sting which targets an eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz) who has little experience of people. Stephen's plan is for Bloom to sweep her off her feet, in the halting way of one sad sack to another, and whisk her off on a European adventure that includes her handing over a million bucks to acquire a stolen medieval manuscript for an Argentinean art collector. The brothers will keep the dough, their mark will have some fun, and everybody will go home content.

The design works well at first. The heiress takes to the idea of smuggling and romance like flame to paper, but the vulnerable Bloom takes the role of sweetheart too personally. The plot winds down to a jumble of con and counter-con and Is that really a con? with Bloom's soul and happiness on the line. Like his co-stars, Brody is affable enough to generate concern about these stakes, yet that is part of the movie's failing. Like Stephen does to Bloom, the movie stifles its characters with contrivances that do not ring true, making any emotions in the story a matter of frustration rather than satisfaction.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.