I love movies with Mark Ruffalo in them. Or do I? Certainly, I can't recall ever watching him play a character that didn't make me swoon like a Mills and Boon heroine. It's his voice, I think, and the way he moves, simultaneously diffident and driven. It melts my resistance like a blowtorch, but damned if it doesn't invariably make me feel slightly soiled after the fact. I may rave, therefore, about Avengers Assemble and Now You See Me, but I rarely get the desire to watch them again.
I digress, though. Whilst checking my facts for yesterday's film, I happened to read about The Brothers Bloom. It's a caper movie that stars Mark Ruffalo as well as Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz, both capable and engaging performers with real acting chops. IMDB users rated it 6.9, which is probably at the lower end of average if you look at it in dim lighting with your eyes scrunched up, so I decided it was probably worth a punt.
Bloom tells the story of brothers Stephen (Ruffalo) and Bloom (Brody), who learn to grift as kids while being bounced from foster home to foster home. Bloom, a sensitive soul, is too shy to speak to girls, so Stephen starts devising increasingly elaborate con tricks that allow him to play any role he chooses, including that of the dashing romantic lead. The perfect con, Stephen maintains, is one where all parties receive exactly what they want.
To say much more about the plot would be to risk spoilers. I don't think it's revealing too much, however, to say it revolves around Weisz' wealthy heiress and, inevitably, that one last con.
The good
This is usually the part where I say that the day's film looks gorgeous, and yes, Bloom certainly does. Director Rian Johnson doesn't seem anxious to tie the setting to any particular time period, borrowing visual idiom from film noir and European fairytales as well as modern crime thrillers. It's quirky, yes, but then so's everything else in the film, from the rhyming prologue to the heiress' hobby of collecting hobbies.Performances? What did you really expect? Johnson's script is in safe hands here. Brody really gets the chance to use his physicality as the lovelorn Bloom, while Weisz' Penelope is as winsome a heroine as you could hope for. Star prize, however, has to go to Rinko Kikuchi as Bang Bang, the boys' assistant, who has maybe a dozen lines in the entire movie but steals entire scenes with a single roll of her eyes. If there is a weak link here (and I'm not saying there was) it would have to be Ruffalo, who doesn't seem entirely at home in a role that fails to capitalise on his trademark intensity.
The bad
Damn, but Johnson wants people to love this film. Most especially, I think, he wants Wes Anderson fans to love it. What the viewer gets, therefore, is a lot of Andersonesque stylings in the costumes and the mannered dialogue, and the rambling plot that never really matters as much as the character quirks.Except that, well, Bloom is a film about a con, so plot matters. Or is a film about a con that turns out not to be much of a con the biggest con of all? Personally, deprived of that one final fold to bring the flower into focus, I felt as though I'd been conned myself. Sure, the movie is witty and charming, but is it truly intelligent? Probably not. Half an hour after viewing I was left with that same old Ruffalo hangover; the nasty, slimy feeling I get when a film temporarily engages my heart without actually getting anywhere near my brain.
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