IMAGINE “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” filtered through the increas ingly hermetically sealed sensibility of Wes Anderson, and you’ve got Rian Johnson’s disappointing “The Brothers Bloom.”
I’m puzzled why the talented director of “Brick” — a little-seen riff on “The Big Sleep” (set in a contemporary high school) that I loved — would want to subordinate his distinctive voice to slavishly imitate a director whose self-conscious whimsy has turned into an artistic cul-de-sac.
“The Brothers Bloom” is actually a tad more entertaining than Anderson’s last fiasco, “The Darjeeling Limited,” with which it shares a star (Adrien Brody), a self-mythologizing plot, a cross-country train trip and precious title cards like “Springing the trap.”
But Johnson’s strong cast is often upstaged by its gorgeously photographed locations, which include the Czech Republic and Montenegro.
A Ricky Jay-narrated prologue following two young orphans staging their first con is delightful, but also serves as a warning of the archness to come.
Twenty years later, the grown-up Bloom (Brody) is tiring of the elaborate confidence games cooked up by his older brother, Stephen (Mark Ruffalo), who concocts “one last job” to set them up for life.
Their mark is a bored New Jersey heiress (Rachel Weisz) — she describes herself as an “epileptic photographer” — whom they con into financing a phony scheme to smuggle a rare book out of a Prague museum.
Bloom and Stephen’s confederate is an explosives expert with dubious expertise named Bang Bang, played essentially in mime by Japanese actress-model Rinko Kikuchi (“Babel”).
Other shady characters are portrayed by such notables as Robbie Coltrane and Maximilian Schell.
Weisz reveals a heretofore unsuspected gift for slapstick comedy, and there are scattered wonderful moments — her flamenco dance with Brody is one — as well as lines such as, “That’s my new favorite camel.”
But the movie fails to add up to the sum of its laborious parts. There’s no emotional investment in any of the characters, and you can see the writer-director’s windup con coming a mile away.
I knew “The Brothers Bloom” was in trouble when the biggest laugh at the screening I attended came from this accidentally timely line: “I don’t like to vilify an entire country, but Mexico is a horrible place.”
THE BROTHERS BLOOM
Doesn’t really.
Running time: 113 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence, sensuality, profanity). At the Lincoln Square and the Angelika.