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DVDfever.co.uk – The Brothers Bloom Blu-ray reviewDom Robinson reviews
Elevation SalesBlu-ray: 
DVD:
- Cert:
- Running time: 114 minutes
- Year: 2008
- Cat no: OPTBD1828R0
- Released: October 2010
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 12
- Picture: 1080p High Definition
- Sound: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Super 35)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: BD50
- Price: £22.99 (Blu-ray); £17.99 (DVD)
- Extras: Featurette: “In Bloom”, Interview with director Rian Johnson, Deleted Scenes with director’s commentary, Trailer
Director:
- Rian Johnson
(Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper, TV: Breaking Bad)
Producers:
- Ram Bergman and James D Stern
Screenplay:
- Rian Johnson
Music:
- Nathan Johnson
Cast :
- Bloom: Adrien Brody
Penelope: Rachel Weisz
Stephen: Mark Ruffalo
Bang Bang: Rinko Kikuchi
Curator: Robbie Coltrane
Diamond Dog: Maximilian Schell
Narrator: Ricky Jay
Young Bloom: Zachary Gordon
Young Stephen: Max Records
Charleston: Andy Nyman
The Duke: Noah Segan
Rose: Nora Zehetner
The Brothers Bloombegins when Stephen, 13, and Bloom, 10, went through a succession of foster families, getting chucked out one afteranother for a number of reasons such as “inappropriate behaviour”, “sold our furniture”, “caused flooding” and”molesting a cat”.
Eventually, they learned a trade of sorts – hitting upon the art of the con, originally to get Bloom to talk a girl athis latest school, with Stephen putting together the con as a flow chart in 15 steps, helping themselves ingratiatewith people with whatever tale they could spin that was believable. After the initial sequence with their originalcon, we fast-forward to the present day.
At this point, they’ve spent 25 years leading a string of elaborate cons and Bloom wants his life back – he wants tobe himself and to stop pretending to be someone he isn’t. He only manages a temporary escape, to Montenegro, but getsdragged back for one final con, posing as antiquities dealers and conning Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a young womanwho lives in a mansion which her late parents owned.
There’s a lot of very clever moments, such as when they arrange for Bloom to meet Penelope by having him ride his pushbike into her sports car, except that she’s so ditzy, after she screeches to a halt, she zooms off and ends up crashingdown an embankment. While he’s fine, she ends up unconscious in a hospital bed, but when she’s out and they start chatting,she tells him she fills her time by collecting hobbies. She sees someone else doing something, learns how to do it frombooks and gets cracking. These include the piano, accordian, karate, skateboarding, juggling with chainsaws… yes, Ididn’t make that up.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the era of this movie, as Penelope’s car is clearly a present day vehicle, but when thebrothers go to Europe by steamer ship… just who travels that way these days?
The film has a great cast, with Adrien Brody as Bloom, living in his older brother’s shadow and also trying toescape from under it; Rachel Weisz plays ditzy well – and this is probably the first time I’ve watched afilm with her in and NOT found her annoying; Mark Ruffalo, as Bloom’s brother, Stephen, is always worth a watchand there’s an intriguing performance from Rinko Kikuchi as Bang Bang, their rather mental assistant and a rarespeaker. Support comes from Robbie Coltrane as a Belgian curator and legend Maximilian Schell as an archenemy of theirs, Diamond Dog. In a film that’s mostly very well written, his is the least fulfilling part as it just allseems rather tacked on.
Overall, It doesn’t take a genius to work out that singletons Bloom and Penelope get the hots for each other and that that willknacker making her an effective mark, but that doesn’t matter too much as it starts getting a bit too complex for itsown good and loses its way, although it does come up with a decent ending.
Presented in the original 2.35:1 anamorphic theatrical ratio, the picture is sharp and detailed with no problems whatsoever. It’s sharply filmed and edited and has a brilliant visual style throughout, in terms of how Rian Johnsonframes each shot and also when each new location is introduced.For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 37″ Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
As for the sound, this is in DTS 5.1 HD Master Audio, or DTS 5.1 for those, like me, without the full technicaldohickey. It’s mostly used for dialogue and ambience, with occasional musical interludes.
The extras are as follows:
- Featurette: “In Bloom” (15:35):This contains solely of one-set footage, with text appearing onscreen at times to point out who certain crew membersare and what their job entails. You’ll enjoy it if you were a huge fan of the film.
- Interview with director Rian Johnson (18:45):Does what it says on the tin, with the interviewer off-camera, her voice coming out of the left speaker, and the director’svoice coming from the right.
- Deleted Scenes with director’s commentary (32:30):Rian Johnson tells us he recommends watching them with the commentary on, yet turning it off isn’t an option anyway.In most cases, he doesn’t speak for too often, he just introduces the scene. However, for some he talks almost all ofthe way through, and since you can’t turn him off, this gets very irritating.There are 21 scenes in total and nothing much that I’d put back in, as the film is long enough, but a lot of thesethings were cut for timing reasons.
- Trailer (2:18): In open-matte 16:9.
Oddly, there’s also a ‘play all’ option for all these extras.
The menu mixes clips of the film with a short piece of the incidental music.There are subtitles in English but the chaptering is lazy with just 12 over the 114-minute running time.There’s also trailers, from Optimum – and even an advert – that you can’tskip past or pause! This is NOT the age of the rental video and this is VERY annoying! STOP IT!
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.