Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody in "The Brothers Bloom," Summit Entertainment, 2008

It took longer than anticipated, but Johnson’s follow-up, “The Brothers Bloom,” is finally making it to theaters, albeit huffing and puffing from the effort. You may get even more overexerted trying to keep up with his stab at a caper comedy-thriller. The eponymous siblings grow up in a series of foster homes from which they are routinely booted for carrying out scams whose stakes grow bigger as they do. By the time they reach their 30s, Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody) -- and that’s no misprint for his name is Bloom Bloom (Leopold, presumably, was taken) -- are accomplished, internationally renowned con artists.

Stephen, whose exuberance for plotting and dramatizing scams makes him Johnson’s obvious surrogate (and a conduit for the best lines), can go on scheming forever, but Bloom yearns for what he characterizes as “an unwritten life,” e.g. one free of deception and masquerade.

Thus, the brothers’ grand finale as charlatans is conceived; their last mark being a bored rich beauty (Rachel Weisz) who's never left her Jersey manse and is eager for adventure. The dodge bounces from Athens to Prague to Russia with a layover in Mexico that, as with much of the film, is inexplicable beyond being an excuse for more rockets-red-glare banter among the principals; the exception being a Japanese demolitions specialist named Bang Bang (“Babel”’s Rinko Kikuchi) who has been part of the Bloom team since they were old enough to drink legally.

Bloom Bloom? Bang Bang? If these contrivances don’t make you wince, the meandering whimsy will. If “Brick’s” grafting of arcane detective story elements helped magnify its emotional life, “Brothers Bloom”’s grasping at con-game conventions keeps you at an awkward distance from the characters -- even the conflicted Bloom, supposedly the emotional center of the story. One says “supposedly” because the movie keeps shifting its center -- and not in the manner at which such caper movies, from “Beat the Devil” to “Topkapi,” have excelled. Those movies earned their eccentricities by basically knowing what they’re doing. With “Brothers Bloom,” the assurance one found in “Brick” is absent and in its place is, well, the coyness alleged by “Brick”'s detractors.

Still, as uneven and misshapen as it is, “The Brothers Bloom” shows Johnson’s continued promise here and there. He has a knack for deadpan humor (with more fangs than some of his contemporaries) and is an inspired romantic with urban landscapes. When you see Brody walking hand-in-hand with Weisz in Prague, you’re almost tempted to think they belong in another movie. Given that Brody, dark suit and all, bears more than a passing resemblance to Prague’s leading literary light, you start to wonder whether Johnson or anybody else should take another shot at filming Kafka’s life story with Brody in the lead.

Hanks has a better haircut this time around for Langdon, and his presence is, if not rapier-like in the classic Sherlockian mode, at least leaner and steadier than it was when he last chased down conspiracies in high religious circles. Once again, he’s got a winsome brunette with a foreign accent following him into dark catacombs; this time, she’s a particle physicist named Vittoria (Ayelet Zurer) who’s around because she’s the only one who can safely dismantle an anti-matter container the conspirators intend to detonate somewhere in Vatican City.

The tick-tock-of-doom plot device keeps our head in the game as Langdon and Vittoria scramble for telltale signs. Not that we care about the mystical hoo-hah in staying one step ahead of the game. What we’re really studying are the faces of such motley actors as Armin Mueller-Stahl (as a stuffy cardinal), Stellan Skarsgård (as a shifty Vatican cop) and Ewan McGregor (as the closest associate of a recently deceased pontiff). The movie is supposed to be about the balance between faith and reason (I guess). But what it’s really about is goosing our expectations of summer Hollywood phantasmagoria -- especially the “gore” part, given the movie’s displays of mutilation, torture, burning flesh and exploding chest wounds.

Gene Seymour is our guest critic for the month of May.

"Summer Hours" and "The Brothers Bloom" open in limited release on May 15th, while "Angels and Demons" opens in wide release.

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Dadá

Just watched this movie, really enjoyed. Oh, and great review btw...spot on.