The Brothers Bloom

Damn. My high hope of achieving an effortless cool has been dashed [Dashed, I say!] by the literal awesomeness of the brothers when they were just kids. I will never be as cool as the Brothers Bloom were when they were scarcely ten years old. I mean, everyone in this new classic can ascertain to be legit brilliant on the worst of their days, but the boys at the beginning of their young lives left me knowing that you either got it or you don’t.

But even greater than my own personal ambition to act as the cool and quirky stand-in for the characters in the real world is my covetous relationship with their style. The clothing was downright tempting. I left the theatre with a new insight into my fashion soul – I wanted a 60’s style cheetah print wool coat. And I would wear it with black stockings. That is all.
By my minimal praises of the movie itself, you may think that I consider it to be subpar, unwatchable and possibly even a movie only meant to be seen for its capability of becoming a cult classic five to ten years down the line. No, sir, I do not attest to any of these particulars!

Rather, I will commend the movie on its ability to channel the playful style of filmmaking that comes from the past with a much needed ability to hold a modern audiences attention with explosions, gun shows, and other assorted mischief. It was that excessive display of all things impish that had me decided on the fact that I would love this movie not long after Bang Bang mimed a gunshot through her head and into a light bulb. While the last thirty minutes lost touch at times with its effortlessness and bordered on forced intelligence that was not needed to prove to an already rapt audience the level of attention put into the film, it never forgot the charm that got you at hello. And although I will never be that effortlessly cool character with a tattoo on my neck that reads "When you're done with something, blow it up," I can at least watch some effortlessly cool characters running around conning people and blasting things to bits.

While I suppose it’s my job to tell you, an unsuspecting audience, that the plot doesn’t exactly establish time for you to really invest yourself within the characters in a traditional manner, I feel that I should also point out that the traditional need not be the norm in a comedy of wits that doesn’t want to be normal anyway.

~Ferdinando