The Brothers Bloom

“I tried to stuff everything that I love into that movie all at once… My love of Ricky Jay and con-man movies, and traveling, and the romance of all of that. And nobody saw it.” – Rian Johnson

Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo are the eponymous siblings, orphans raised and returned by several dozen outraged foster parents over the years. Bloom (Brody) is the younger of the two, and from an early age his brother’s Stephen’s instrument in dizzyingly capricious confidence games. Now in his 30s, Bloom wants out – but Stephen persuades him to do the proverbial last score, baiting him with Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a lonely epileptic millionairess who collects hobbies the way some people collect stamps.

Posing as antique dealing smugglers, the brothers draw her into a crazy escapade of half-untruths. But is Bloom in love with her, or just caught up in Stephen’s script?

Flitting from New Jersey to Montenegro, Budapest and St Petersburg, tossing off allusions to Herman Melville and Dostoyevski with the same abandon Penelope shrugs off another mil, The Brothers Bloom has a giddy flamboyance and a go-for-broke quality which gives it wings.

That rare and wonderful thing: a movie lover’s movie.

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