The Brothers Bloom: Review By SMRTALEC

Rian Johnson has done it again! The up-and-coming director delivered a brilliant piece of work for his sophomore film. I enjoyed this film because it had a sexy, smart, and intimidating style to it. Sexy in the sense that the main characters dressed, talked, and moved like 1920/30’s con men. The film is about con men so the dialogue has the same amount of trickery as the lead characters have up their sleeves to pull off their cons. You never completely know what’s going through Stephen’s (played by Ruffalo) head because he is the over all mastermind in the film so the twists play in smoothly. The settings are both lavish and exotic, stretching from various parts of Europe to South America. There were so many elements to the film that I found so enjoyable that I couldn’t think of anything I disliked.

So the film goes likes this: Two brothers, Stephen and Bloom (Ruffalo and Brody) grew up as natural born con artists. After years of this dirty business, Bloom wants out but every time he tries, Stephen is able to talk him out of it. In order to get out he disappears. Time passes and his brother finds him to ask him to help in one last con and the film takes off from there. The brothers along with accomplices Bang Bang (Kikuchi) and “The Curator” (Coltrane) travel to Europe where they find the person they plan on conning, Penelope Stamp (Weisz). Penelope is a lonely, ridiculously wealthy heiress who does nothing but stay locked up inside her multi-million dollar mansion collecting hobbies and reading a wide variety of books. During the whole act, Bloom makes the biggest mistake a con artist can make; fall in love with the person your conning. The rest of the film involves the many twists that take place during the plan to con Penelope and how the perfect con can go so wrong.

The film has a terrific ensemble cast who include Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi, and Robbie Coltrane. It is a very character driven story with colorful characters. The performances were great all around, every character had a distinct style to them which made it very entertaining to watch.

Every con man story is expected to be unconventional in structure but the unpredictable nature of this story was easy to understand and actually made sense unlike the Ocean’s 11 movies. Although some twists seemed like nonsense when they hit, later they’re brought back to help the audience put the pieces of the puzzle together. The story is smart, witty, and above all makes sense.

The film starts off beautifully with spectacular cinematography! It was the first thing I noticed when the film began and I thought to myself how much bigger this film is compared to Johnson’s last film, Brick. You can easily tell he was poking his head out of his shell more. The whole film has great visuals and takes full advantage of the locations they shot at.

The score was just another great aspect to the sly and witty style the movie generated. I recommend listening to the /film podcast that features an interview with the film’s composer, Nathan Johnson. I’m gonna take a guess that he may possibly be related to the director. I wouldn’t be surprised since the director’s brother created the latest poster for the film.

I actually had the great opportunity to meet Rian Johnson back in february when he held a con man festival at the New Bev Cinema which was titled, “Rian Johnson’s Festival of Trickery”. It was a cool, week-long, festival of classic con man films. I went the day he had the sneak peek for The Brothers Bloom. I noticed he seemed sort of nervous when speaking of the film, especially when he mentioned that it would release the weekend of Terminator Salvation. But when the film ended that night it received a large applause and everyone seemed to really enjoy it and we were able to personally congratulate him on the film afterwards as well. Also, the young boy who plays the lead in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are was there that night as well. He plays young Bloom in the film I believe.

I was already a big fan of Johnson’s work and The Brothers Bloom made me a bigger fan. He definitely raises the bar when it comes to a cinematic experience and you walk out of the theater with great satisfaction.