Writer/director Rian Johnson is a cinematic mashup artist. His 2005 "Brick" was a tightly plotted mix of Dashiell Hammett and John Hughes, in which kids in a modern suburban high school talked and murdered like they were in a hard-boiled '40s noir. (Rent it. You won't be sorry.)
Now Johnson has created another singular universe with "The Brothers Bloom." It's a con-man comedy-drama about a pair of legendary grifter siblings -- one bold (Mark Ruffalo), one meek (Adrien Brody). After a quick Ricky Jay-narrated account of their childhood that plays like "Pushing Daisies: The Movie," the adult Blooms unleash an epic, globe-hopping "perfect con" on a hobby-collecting, shut-in heiress (Rachel Weisz, who has quite possibly never been more quirkily adorable).
Johnson's mashup this time is that he sets the film in an out-of-time universe where people travel by steamer ship but use cell phones, and (more crucially) Johnson finds and mostly sustains a groove you might call "low-key screwball." The costumes are Marx Brothers-vivid (bowler hats abound), the cons and counter-cons pile on with increasing lunacy, and there are bits of well-staged, broad farce involving car crashes and explosions. But Johnson counterbalances the pleasant, old-Hollywood comic fizz by moving at a slightly more thoughtful pace and letting his leads give naturalistic performances -- performances that explore the finer points of romance, sacrifice, melancholy and sibling rivalry.
It’s a mad tonal balancing act -- a "Road" picture full of high adventure and dark emotional underpinnings -- and Johnson doesn't just make it work: His confident direction takes what could have been self-consciously precious and makes it hugely entertaining and a little moving.
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B-plus;114 minutes; rated PG-13 for violence, some sensuality and brief strong language. Playing in Portland at the Fox Tower.
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