The Brothers Bloom \/\/FREE\\\\
Twenty-five years later, the brothers are the world's most successful con men. They even have a regular accomplice: Bang Bang, a Japanese explosives expert who rarely speaks. Bloom, however, is dissatisfied with being nothing but an actor in Stephen's schemes. He is tired of being no more than the characters his brother has come up with and wants an 'unwritten life'. He quits and moves to Montenegro. Three months later, Stephen finds Bloom and convinces him to execute one final con. Bloom reluctantly agrees. The brothers will masquerade as antiques dealers and target Penelope Stamp, a rich, socially-isolated heiress who lives alone in a New Jersey mansion.
The Brothers Bloom
Bloom and Penelope meet when Bloom purposely runs into Penelope's sports car with his bicycle. Penelope reveals that she has been alone for most of her life and has picked up an array of strange hobbies such as juggling and kung fu. Bloom senses Penelope's craving for adventure and hints that he is sailing to Europe tomorrow. The next morning, Penelope arrives at the harbor to sail with the brothers to Greece.
On the ship, Melville, a Belgian hired by Stephen, begins the con, telling Penelope that the brothers Bloom are in fact antiques smugglers and he wants their help with a smuggling job in Prague. Penelope is thrilled with the idea of becoming a smuggler and convinces the brothers to accept the job, unaware that this is part of the con. Meanwhile, Bloom and Penelope are becoming attracted to one another, but Stephen warns Bloom that the con will fail if he actually falls in love with Penelope.
At the hotel bar in Prague, Bloom is visited by the brothers' former mentor and current enemy, Diamond Dog. He warns Bloom that Stephen will not be around forever, and tells Bloom he should join him. Stephen arrives and stabs Diamond Dog in the hand with a broken bottle, telling him to stay away.
In Prague, Melville cons Penelope out of a million dollars and flees, according to plan. Penelope still wants to go ahead as an antiques smuggler and steal the rare book that Melville told her about. The brothers tell Bang Bang to set off a small explosive in Prague Castle that will trigger the fire alarm, allowing Penelope to sneak in and steal the book. But Penelope accidentally switches the backpacks containing the explosives and they blow up the entire tower, creating panic in Prague. Despite this, Penelope enters the museum and steals the book. She is caught, but somehow convinces the chief of police to let her go.
The team goes to Mexico to complete the con. Bloom, who has fallen in love with Penelope, reveals to her that they are con men and the whole adventure has been a con. Stephen has anticipated his brother's change of heart and written it into his plan. The brothers fight and a gun accidentally discharges, wounding Stephen. Penelope checks out the wound, realizes that it is fake blood, and leaves with a broken heart. Bloom punches Stephen and leaves for Montenegro once again.
Three months later, Penelope finds Bloom, wanting to be with him and to become a con artist. Unable to deny his love for her but not wanting her to be like him, Bloom meets with Stephen to set up one final con, where they will fake their own deaths. The team goes to St. Petersburg, where they must sell the rare book to Diamond Dog. They are ambushed by Diamond Dog's gang while heading to the exchange. Stephen is kidnapped and Bang Bang takes this opportunity to quit working for the Bloom brothers. As soon as she leaves, her car explodes, leaving Penelope and Bloom uncertain whether she was caught in the blast or faked her death. Stephen is held ransom for $1.75 million. Bloom suspects this is just another one of Stephen's tricks; Penelope, just in case, wires the money from her bank account to the mobsters.
Johnson first had the idea for The Brothers Bloom a few years before Brick. Originally the film was going to be more serious and had a mentor relationship instead of brothers. He started writing the script after taking Brick to Sundance over the next six months.[10] The script was challenging for Johnson to write because he wanted to create a character-based con man film with an "emotional payoff", while including all the storytelling aspects of the genre. Johnson felt by sticking to a standard form of a con man film (two guys with one girl and one of them falls in love with the girl), he could deviate from the classical ending with a big twist.[5] When writing the script, Johnson watched The Man Who Would Be King, but his main influence came from Paper Moon. While filming the movie, he watched The Conformist and 8 for visual style.[9]
Rian Johnson's "The Brothers Bloom" lets us in on the con and then fools us. It does that in an interesting way. It gives us Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody), and I might as well get this out of the way: I don't know why they're called the brothers Bloom when that's the first name of one, and neither seems to have a family name. Maybe I missed something.
They meet a promising mark named Penelope (Rachel Weisz), who is rich, beautiful and lonely, even though most women who are rich and beautiful don't have a crushing problem with loneliness. She falls into a scheme fashioned by the brothers, and I will not specify which falls in love with her, but one does, and then ... I have to watch my step here. The brothers are such perfectionists that they like to involve as many marks as they can. Let's leave it that.
But Stephen pulls Bloom back for what he promises will be their last sting. The target: A wildly rich, profoundly naive New Jersey heiress named Penelope (Rachel Weisz). Although the woman seems an easy mark, Stephen insists on a convoluted plot that takes her, the brothers, and Stephen's bomb-happy Japanese sidekick Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi) to Greece, Prague, Mexico, Montenegro and finally St. Petersburg. (The movie was shot entirely in Eastern Europe.)
Brody and Ruffalo play Bloom and Stephen, two thirty-something con men who have become legendary because of the audacity and complexity of their schemes. The capers are plotted by Stephen, who "writes [them] the way dead Russians wrote novels." That makes him the Dostoevsky of the caper world. Bloom, however, wants out. He wants an "unwritten life," one where his every move is not the result of a role he's playing in a scenario. He wants something real. So his brother convinces him to go out big, with one last scam. Aided by their girl Friday, Bang Bang (Babel's Rinko Kikuchi, whose limited English isn't a problem because the film doesn't require her to speak more than a handful of words - including a memorable "fuck me"), who's an "artist with nitro glycerin," the brothers head for New Jersey. Their mark is a lonely, wealthy heiress named Penelope (Weisz), who has a penchant for crashing expensive cars, is a self-described "epileptic photographer," and "collects hobbies." She and Stephen meet (the term "meet cute" doesn't quite apply here), get to know each other, and fall in love. That's bad for the con because, of course, it's tough to screw over a lover. Then again, considering Stephen's penchant for long, involved, convoluted capers, maybe that's necessary to what's happening - especially when one considers that "The best con is when everyone gets what they want."
Directed by Rian Johnson, The Brothers Bloom is a 2008 caper film about two brothers who've worked together as con men for their entire lives. At the top of their game, the younger brother Bloom (Adrien Brody) finds himself increasingly reluctant to do shady deeds. His older brother Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) persuades him to do one last con, accompanied by their regular accomplice Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi), with eccentric heiress Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz) as the mark. Naturally, Bloom falls head over heels in love with Penelope.
The Brothers Bloom is the tale of two orphaned con men brothers. Stephen (Mark Ruffalo), the older, is a concocter of con game stories; Bloom (Adrien Brody), the younger, goes along as a would-be character in the stories, because he has no real life of his own.
Bloom of course quickly falls in love with Penelope, and begins to feel increasingly guilty about the scheme. Penelope, meanwhile, loves the concept of being a smuggler that the brothers have fed her. She pursues it with greater enthusiasm than the brothers themselves.
Actor and sleight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay serves as our narrator for the first little chunk of film, where we get a glimpse of two little kids in fedoras and white button-down shirts who have learned the hard way they can only count on each other. They spend recesses spinning yarns and swindling the other kiddos out of their precious dollars for a glimpse of something magical; their ruse starts as a way for a young boy called Bloom to win the attention of his crush, and their payout is in Pixy Stix. It's a magical, melancholy introduction to the brothers, and more importantly, to the world Johnson has created out of whole cloth.
Despite a failure to fix the tone, leading to a tragic finale that lacked the necessary bite, The Brothers Bloom is a detailed meditation on the nature of lives over-scripted and corrupted by deceit. The titular brothers are a pair of con-artists, weaving their way around the world in a series of comic confidence tricks that supposedly leave their victims satisfied. When younger brother Bloom decides he wants out, his older brother fakes an elaborate scam that allows him to enter into a new life, unencumbered by his past criminality.
Beneath the comedy, the film attempts to discuss the impact of both fraternal love and the search for an authentic life. In a world of Russian gangsters and glamour, the brothers struggle to maintain their integrity, and when Bloom falls in love with one of their marks, the tragedy unfolds. The conclusion (that the unwritten life Bloom longs to discover is yet another fiction) comes at such a cost that it feels harsh, especially against the increasingly bumbling antics of the supposedly legendary scammers. 041b061a72