The Brothers Bloom

The Bloom brothers (Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo) are perhaps the best con men on the planet, but after 20 years of swindling people, they've grown weary of the game. When the younger Bloom, played by Brody, is ready to pack it in, his older brother persuades him to pull one last job—which, they reckon, will set them both up for life. The “mark” is a ditzy New Jersey heiress (Rachel Weisz), who's so bored that she flits from interest to interest faster than most people change their clothes. The Blooms talk her into financing what might be the perfect crime: the smuggling of an extremely rare book out of a Prague museum. The heiress is delighted to be part of the scheme, which of course has unintended consequences. Robbie Coltrane as the Curator and Maximilian Schell as Diamond Dog (the Blooms' mentor-turned-archenemy) both play characters with dubious motives, and Japanese model-actress Rinko Kikuchi makes a strong impression as one of the Blooms' accomplices, an explosives expert nicknamed Bang Bang. At his best, director Rian Johnson seems to be channeling filmmaker Wes Anderson in this self-conscious caper film, in which the individual parts seem greater than the whole. An optional purchase, at best. (E. Hulse)