The Brothers Bloom - All style, no substance

I watched 'The Brothers Bloom' and, only as the credits rolled, did I realise that it was written and directed by Rian Johnson - the man who ruined... sorry, wrote 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi.' Perhaps, if I'd known that it was made by him, I would never have bothered with it.  And, by doing that, would have then saved myself an hour and a half.

Yes, just like when Johnson took the most beloved film franchise of all time and turned it on its head in order to 'subvert expectations' rather than tell a good story, here he just uses a tired and cliched story with a few good actors and neat directing techniques and passes it off as something - supposedly - intellectual.

We're briefly introduced to a pair of young brothers as they learn to con their way through life.  Quickly, we're brought into the present and see that they've grown up to continue their questionable lifestyle and now played by Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody.  Ruffalo is the harder, older brother, while Brody is the soft younger sibling who desperately wants out of their line of work.  Ruffalo persuades him to participate in 'one last con' and they (accompanied by an - almost - mute Japanese woman) decide to swindle an epileptic young artist played by Rachel Weiss.

If you get that far into the film (and you probably will, as this all happens within the first twenty minutes or so) you'll then probably be able to predict how everything pans out from there.  It's a weird sort of film, in which you just can't really tell what's wrong with it specifically, but you know it's just 'a little off' from where it probably should be.

About the best thing I can say about this film is that at least it's all Rian's own work and that if you don't like it (like I don't - or rather it's so decidedly average not to worth bothering with) then it doesn't impact on an entire franchise that totally destroys your childhood memories.  Oh, and the greenscreen special effects are also really bad for some reason when they probably shouldn't be.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back