20th Century Fox | 2008 | 110 mins. | Rated R
The first few minutes of writer/director Randall Miller’s (Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, Bottle Shock) Nobel Son, gave me a bit of a headache. The film’s frenzied, video-style beginning has scenes flashing by very quickly that reveal a bloody severed thumb while accompanied to loud pulsating music. This was not exactly a promising start. I’ll admit my expectations weren’t all that high; shooting for the film took place between October and November 2005 but the film wasn’t released theatrically until December 5, 2008 after it had received mostly negative reviews at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Nobel Son was recently released on DVD, after a mere three weeks in theaters and a meager box office take of $540,382.
On the day he is supposed to leave for Sweden to receive his Nobel Prize for chemistry, Dr. Eli Michaelson (Alan Rickman) finds out that his PhD-candidate son Barkley (Bryan Greenberg) has been kidnapped. While his mother, Sarah (Mary Steenburgen), a famed forensic psychiatrist, worries as a $2,000,000 ransom is demanded for the return of their son; the egomaniacal Eli is more upset that the whole event has overshadowed his big win.
The plot itself is like a really bad version of Pulp Fiction but some fine acting actually almost saves this film. As Eli’s tolerant, long suffering wife, Mary Steenburgen is the perfect blend of sweet, ruthless and exasperated. A thumb shows up in the mail but the police need time to positively identify it as Barkley’s. Learning this, Susan rattles off a list of somewhat distressing reasons why it’s better for everyone if the thumb really does belong to her son. “But he’ll never be good at golf,” she sighs. “You need thumbs for golf.” Max Mariner (Bill Pullman), a co-worker of Susan’s assigned to the kidnapping case, takes this response in stride. Max stays cool throughout; slightly suspicious of the whole situation, he makes a few calculated moves on his own to try and get to the bottom of things.
Eliza Dushku is pretty darn good as the crazy poet/artist City Hall. She’s undeniably sexy but completely unhinged. Barely understandable and seemingly unable to sit still, squirming as Max tries to question her. Though the film doesn’t use her character very well in the end, Dushku gives much needed energy to every scene she’s in.
It’s really a shame that Miller and his co-writer wife, Jody Savin couldn’t come up with a quality script. Besides the actors mentioned, Ted Danson, Danny DeVito, Ernie Hudson and Lindy Booth all make appearances and do nothing worth noting. When you can get that level of talent to appear in your movie, it’s generally a good idea to give them a solid script to work with.
For a caper to really work, the plot needs to be solid and clever; the double crosses diabolical in nature. Nobel Son has all of these things for moments at a time but fails to maintain any energy. There are performances worth watching and the story has a kernel of something very interesting but it never really develops into anything concrete. Nobel Son feels like a film that should have gone through a few more drafts before heading in front of the cameras.
I don’t think I can fairly comment on the video quality, since I was sent a DVD-R screener copy.
Nobel Son appears to be a fairly low-budget movie, so despite a mid-movie car chase, the surrounds on this English Dolby Digtital 5.1 track only activate for Paul Oakenfold’s score. Otherwise, the dialogue comes through the front and not much else is going on. English captions and Spanish subtitles are provided.
Nobel Son includes some special features:
• Audio Commentary with director/co-writer/producer Randall Miller, co-writer/producer Jody Savin and actors Bryan Greenberg, Mike Ozier and Eliza Dushku. Dushku was recorded separately (with Miller in the room), but the track seems to be awkwardly edited in an attempt to pretend that the whole group is watching the movie together. Dushku barely says a word; the track is dominated by Miller and Greenberg. who are genial and impart a lot of production information, but on the whole it’s not all that engaging.
• Deleted Scenes (3:45) there are three of them here.
• Making-of-featurette (13:00) standard EPK stuff. The director and the actors are interviewed about their experiences making the film.
• Theatrical Trailers both red-band (2:37) and green-band (2:27) theatrical trailers for Nobel Son are included.
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