On the Couch

DVD REVIEW

The Brothers Bloom****
Directed by: Rian Johnson
Starring: Rachel Weisz; Adrien Brody; Mark Ruffalo; Rinko Kikuchi

Brooklyn’s Finest ***
Directed by: Michael C Martin
Starring: Richard Gere; Don Cheadle; Ethan Hawke; Wesley Snipes

The Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson’s follow up to the fantastic teen gumshoe flick, Brick, is a line in the sand.
After delivering a low-budget detective flick with a gritty, peculiar, personal feel to it, the American filmmaker takes on an entirely different sort of cinematic animal with a substantially larger budget, canvas and high-profile cast and knocks it out of the proverbial ball park.
Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo star as brothers Bloom and Stephen, a pair of orphans whose troubled childhood saw them develop into profoundly talented conmen and masters of the “long con” – the sort of trick that leaves the swindled unaware that they’ve even been taken for a ride.
With Stephen providing the plans, Bloom the sweet and trustworthy pointman of the operation and their silent but deadly demolitions expert, Bang-Bang (Rinko Kikuchi) providing the pyrotechnics, the three con their way across the world.
Until Bloom decided he wants out. As all these stories go, however, he gets lured back for “one more job” – the target being the fabulously rich Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a lonely eccentric who fills her days collecting hobbies and random skills.
The team gather steam as the framework for the con is laid and the whole show starts to look like some very clever people assembling the most elaborate game of Mousetrap you’ve ever seen only to have all their good work stymied by Bloom falling for Penelope.
The only problem is that the set-up is, perhaps, a bit too good, a little too convincing. Because you buy the boys as being master con men, you start to suspect everything. So everyone’s a suspect and nothing’s a surprise.
Penelope, far from being a hapless mark, is also a bit too clever for her own good – you’re never quite sure if she’s playing along or if she really believes the boys’
blarney.
It’s a shame and really only a small quibble because, even though it fails to rise to the heights of well-planned, guilty pleasure heist movies like Ocean’s 11, or mind-bendingly enjoyable head-wreckers like Inception, the peculiar family dynamic and quirky individual performances make it a thoroughly enjoyable way to pass the time.
From a film that succeeds maybe a little too well to one that omits an essential ingredient, Brooklyn’s Finest is the latest from director Antoine Fuqua.
After taking a brief holiday in the middle ages with King Arthur, the Training Day director is back on familiar ground, dealing with the realities of being a cop in a tough part of States, this time shifting the focus from the Rampart district of LA on the West Coast to New York’s borough of Brooklyn.
The flick focuses on three different cops’ stories – one is clinging to his identity after an extended period working undercover, another is scheming to make money by any means necessary to buy a new house for his sick wife and soon to be expanded family and finally an old and bitter beat cop runs out the time on his career doing as little as possible and earning nothing but the scorn of his co-workers.
Under the normal run of things, you’d expect these three threads to somehow coalesce at some point in the film or at least develop sufficiently so that they have some sort of an impact on each other but unfortunately, in this case, you’d be wrong.
Despite making what is, in many ways, a quality flick featuring an excellent cast – Don Cheadle as the undercover drug dealer; a ragged looking Ethan Hawke as the potential house-buyer and Richard Gere as the auld fella with a week left before his pension – the fact that the three tales bear little real relation to  each other beyond the fact that they’re all set in Brooklyn and feature some of the same characters is really a bit of a let down.
Individually, the stories are all excellent; intriguing and well-acted bits of work that would have benefited so much from a bit of final reel stitching together. All the signs seem to be there but the promise is never lived up to.
You can’t really fault Brooklyn’s Finest for most of the sins that ruin films nowadays. But the lingering question of what it could have been will annoy you when it’s all over.