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The Brothers Bloom starts out as what looks like it's on its way to being a fun and witty film with many an intelligent twist and turn. Around its halfway point, though, the movie basically runs out of steam: it stops being an interesting tale about cons and about figuring out who's lying and who's telling the truth, and it simply gets tangled up in all the zigzagging that the plot does before it reaches a climax.
Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody) become skilled in the art of conning people at a very early age. They were complete rogues as kids, constantly passed on by one set of adoptive parents to another. Now, as adults, they're fully committed to their role as con men, with the more assertive Stephen being the one who plans out the cons by literally writing them out as though they were stories. As Bloom describes, "Stephen writes the cons as if he were a dead Russian novelist, with me as the vulnerable anti-hero." They carry out their cons with the help of a Japanese girl who goes by the name Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi, who played the deaf-mute girl in Babel, and interestingly enough, though her character here isn't deaf-mute, she's still virtually silent throughout the film).
The more introverted Bloom decides he's had enough of this lifestyle, and informs his brother that he's done with accompanying him on all these deceptive expeditions. Three months later, the two brothers meet up again, and Stephen proposes to Bloom that they do one last con. Bloom is hesitant, but eventually gives in. The con involves Bloom wooing this apparently spoiled rich girl, Penelope (Rachel Weisz), who lives in a huge mansion and crashes her Lamborghini only to have another one immediately delivered to her. Bloom agrees to work on the con with Stephen and Bang Bang, and he's soon in the process of getting to know Penelope, who turns out to be very eccentric, with all sorts of odd, random hobbies (she "gets bored" and admits that she's "really bad at talking to people").
All of this setup, in addition to several really good moments during the film's first half give this the potential to be a very good second film from Rian Johnson, whose first film, Brick, was an awesome entry to the film noir genre, and one of my favorites of 2006. During an early scene of The Brothers Bloom we even get to see Nora Zehetner, who played the femme fatale in Brick, and to be quite honest, The Brothers Bloom would've benefited from giving her more screen time. The film does feature some hilariously weird moments during its first half, such as Stephen announcing "I must make piss," and Bloom getting literally scored by both Stephen and Bang Bang when he jumps in front of Penelope's Lamborgini.
So, what's the problem? The script just runs out of ideas after a while. Things become stale, and we stop caring all that much about what's true and what's a con, and this could've easily been redeemed by having some sort of huge surprise at the ending (which would've also been appropriate for this sort of film), but we don't get that at all. There are some particularly lame and unnecessary scenes, one involving a character who suddenly becomes aroused by a thunderstorm (the scene isn't played well enough to feel like a solid amusing moment), and another involving a character stealing an apple from a vendor and being chased after doing so.
This year's earlier Duplicity was a stronger and ultimately more entertaining film about the art of conning. I think that the fact that I enjoyed Johnson's directorial debut more than his sophomore effort may be due to the fact that Brick took itself seriously, while The Brothers Bloom tries to cram a lot of black comedy into its scenes, and not a lot of it works as well as he may have hoped. I guess my recommendation in this case is, well, don't get conned into paying $10 to see this in theaters, and perhaps wait to see it on DVD if this really looks like something you'd be interested in.
5/10
