Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) with Bloom (Adrien Brody) star in The Brothers Bloom.

SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom is a sort of later-day vision of the Michael Caine-Steve Martin con man comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. At times it can be just as funny and quirky as that 1988 film (which itself was a remake of the 1964 film Bedtime Story), although in the end it offers more melancholy than larceny.

The sibling con men in this case are played by Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo — and it’s a stretch to believe they’re brothers, both in temperament and in looks. Brody is Bloom, the introspective one who has grown tired of being a “gentleman thief.” He wants to live a life that is real and not a character created by his brother for some elaborate con scheme. “I want an unwritten life. I’ve only lived life through roles that aren’t real, written by you,” Bloom tells his brother Stephen (Ruffalo), a fast talker and more typical of one’s mental picture of a con artist. Stephen likes to diagram his complicated by-the-numbers schemes on a chart and he always paints Bloom as the vulnerable fall guy who can fool his victims.

This has been a lifelong pursuit. In a very funny prologue we see 13-year-old Stephen and 10-year-old Bloom perfecting their skills in a small town. It’s filled with offbeat sights and moments, such as a one-legged cat riding down the streets of a small town in a roller skate shoe, propelled by its crutch. Dressed in black suits, white shirts and black hats, the boys look like young missionaries, but their mission is to fool people into handing over their money. The film’s opening sequence sets up a daffy promise of hilarity ahead, but that goal isn’t always quite met as The Brothers Bloom goes along and the cons become increasingly complex. One is never quite certain whether what one is seeing is real or part of a hoax the boys are perpetrating on someone.

Bloom is ready to pull out of the operation, however, which now includes a nearly wordless Japanese accomplice they call Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi). But Stephen promises that they will all quit the business after pulling one last elaborate con which involves multi-millionaire heiress Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz of The Mummy movies). Stephen describes Penelope as their “last big mark.” Although a con on Penelope breaks Bloom’s big rule of the game — no women! — he soon has given in and she is following them from Montenegro to Prague to New Jersey to Greece to Mexico to Russia as the boys pursue their golden goal.

Johnson and Weisz have fun setting up Penelope’s background: a miserable teenage life that had her living friendless in her huge mansion because she was wrongly diagnosed as being allergic to just about everything; later caring for her gravely ill mother and resenting her mother for it as well as her life. But in her solitude Penelope collected hobbies and demonstrates to Bloom how she has become adept at everything from origami to playing the accordion to juggling chain saws while riding a unicycle. It’s a zippy, hilarious couple of minutes.

Bloom uses his charm to entice Penelope and soon she’s off on a steamer bound for Greece with the boys and Bang Bang, relishing her newfound freedom and giving in to her spirit of adventure. Quickly she becomes the fourth wheel in their schemes, or at least she thinks she is. Naïvely, Penelope does not realize she’s the one who is being set up. Through them, she believes she has become part of a scheme to steal a priceless medieval book from a Prague museum. It’s a very funny sequence, especially after the police corner her in a heating duct as she tries to escape. And yet the sequence ends with one wondering how this sticky situation resolved itself. Neither writer-director Johnson nor Penelope tells us.

Despite Stephen’s warning to Bloom — “Don’t fall in love with her” — it’s not a stretch to figure out what will happen on that score. Weisz is very funny and ditzy in many of her scenes — especially in her erotic reactions to a thunderstorm — creating a compelling character. Kikuchi brings merriment by her facial reactions, not saying a word until late in the film. Brody and Ruffalo go through the push-pull motions of the plot, although their longtime bond is not so convincing because of their very different personalities. Johnson has also included a couple of larger-than-life characters who are just a bit too much — Robbie Coltrane as a Belgian con artist and Maximilian Schell as a one-eyed crook — who take the film out of the bounds of reality.

Nevertheless, this twisty tale often captivates in its offbeat moments. More than once it will keep you guessing.

***The Brothers Bloom

Starring: Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi, Robbie Coltrane, Maximilian Schell.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, adult themes, profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com