Confounding, dishonest 'Nobel Son' no prize
"Nobel Son" is a frenetic, wannabe-edgy kidnapping caper structured like a set of Russian nesting dolls.
Every time you think you've got a handle on the labyrinthine plot, viola! Director/co-writer Randall Miller arbitrarily lays down yet another conspiratorial layer that completely reconfigures everything that has come before.
A filmmaker can get away with this device once or twice, but in the case of "Nobel Son," it happens so often that you just give up trying to figure anything out. You learn quickly not to trust anything that happens on the silver screen, because something will soon reveal that what you thought was occurring was something else entirely.
In any case, "Nobel Son" gives Alan Rickman another choice opportunity to play a smug egomaniac whose sniveling, snarling vocal delivery contains enough venom to kill a herd of elephants.
He plays Eli Michaelson, a narcissistic chemistry professor who hardly speaks to his forensic pathologist wife (Mary Steenburgen) and has practically severed ties with his son Barkley (Bryan Greenberg). Poor Barkley - and he is poor with a $35 weekly allowance from Dad - has committed the unpardonable sin of not majoring in chemistry. He is writing his thesis on cannibalism. (Foreshadowing alert!)
Everyone hates Eli, especially his fellow instructors (led by a white-haired Ted Danson). So when Eli wins the coveted Nobel Prize for chemistry, his natural arrogance increases to tempting-the-wrath-of-the-gods levels.
One night after animalistic sex with a kinky goth poet named City Hall (Eliza Dushku in ultra-fetching mode), Barkley gets kidnapped by a mysterious young man named Thaddeus James (Shawn Hatosy), who claims to be his half-brother.
Thaddeus appears to be an engineering genius and a natural chemistry savant. In addition to having his eye on $2 million of Eli's Nobel Prize money, Thaddeus has a personal agenda to settle. But let's not spoil any of the multitudinous surprises, which Miller pours over his story like ketchup on a cheeseburger.
Miller, co-writing the script with his wife Jody Savin, has directed a kidnapping mystery without actually understanding how to make one.
In sharp, well-constructed kidnapping thrillers, the various plot twists, surprises and complications rise naturally or organically from the characters and circumstances in the story. Miller (who earlier gave us the quiet wine drama "Bottle Shock") merely inserts new information that constantly changes the narrative dynamics.
In short, you feel a little cheated by a storyteller who won't play fair, and who often substitutes strobe-speed editing and flamboyant camera movements for dramatic substance.
"Nobel Son" begins grimly enough with a man's thumb being amputated in front of an ATM. (What's the point? To freak out Roger Ebert?) It could just be a gratuitously violent way to open a movie, or symbolize the cast's thumbnail-sketched characters.
Either way, "Nobel Son" brings new meaning to the phrase "digital divide."
"Nobel Son"
Rating: 1½ stars
Starring: Bryan Greenberg, Alan Rickman, Shawn Hatosy, Mary Steenburgen, Bill Pullman, Danny DeVito
Directed by: Randall Miller
A Freestyle Releasing release. Rated R for violence, language, sexual situations. 110 minutes