Viewed in
2010
Formats
DVD
Premise
Ed Norton plays Bill, a sophisticated college professor who reluctantly returns to his small hometown in Oklahoma to help Brady, his pot-growing twin (Ed Norton) with his money problems.
Loved
The fascinating dialogue.
Disliked
The distracting violence.
Thoughts
Overall, it was a little uneven, but an interesting small film.
The best parts were the characters and dialog (they usually go hand-in-hand). Tim Blake Nelson the writer showed his love for these interesting people full of contradictions and facades. I loved when Brady's explanation of his high-tech growing methods completely overwhelms Bill. In fact, there were numerous scenes of fascinating, revealing, organic dialogue. For me, the philosophical debates and cerebral flirtations between Bill and Keri Russell's character were just perfect, and I could have listened to them talk forever.
Pretty much everyone in the cast was excellent, including supporting roles by Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss. Funniest moment was when Dreyfuss berates Brady about his heritage, while his henchmen roll their eyes implying "same damn speech again". For some reason, Norton's southern accent never sounded natural to me.
The bigger flaw was that the violence in the story never seemed to fit well with the character-driven scenes. I thought that was a weakness in Nelson's directing and writing. For me, they never would have been in the story, but his awkward execution made it even more incongruous. Also, the professor's scandal subplot completely vanished.
It truly was a pity that it was a clumsy chimera instead of something special, because it had some of the most insightful, tender, and intelligent dialog that I had enjoyed this year.
What I would change
Taken out all the violence, replaced it with something creative.
