Confidence games: "The Brothers Bloom"

The Brothers Bloom is a near perfect example of Second Film Syndrome. Having impressed some with 2006's taut, self-contained - and, to these eyes at least, somewhat arch - high-school noir Brick, writer-director Rian Johnson decamped to Europe with some of his regular cast (there are cameos for the earlier film's Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Nora Zehetner) and a handful of more prominent names, and arrived at something a good deal baggier and more divisive.

It begins as Magnolia meets Paper Moon (not a bad start, all told), as our narrator Ricky Jay spins the tale of two young siblings making their first moves in the con game: the downcast, girl-shy Bloom and the ebullient mastermind Stephen. Fastforward 25 years, and with Bloom (Adrien Brody) heading into the doldrums once again, his brother (Mark Ruffalo) hits upon another plan. Their new mark will be Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a reclusive heiress, and just the sort of doleful fairytale princess his brother has proved likely to fall for.

The character names alone serve as notice of a director wearing his literary influences firmly on his sleeve; elsewhere, the boys stash their ill-gotten gains at a dry cleaners known as O'Henry's, while the cloaked fat man on their tail (Robbie Coltrane) takes on the name of Melville - though Penelope rather blows the magic by pointing out such a character also appeared in Herman Melville's novel "The Confidence-Man" ("That's weird"). One recurrent niggle with The Brothers Bloom is Johnson's fondness for describing his own effects and allusions, as though he couldn't be certain his audience was getting them; when Bloom is arrested for palming an apple from a roadside stall, the script has him tell Stephen "it was part of an epiphany", when it's long been obvious that was part of Johnson's masterplan all along.

Still, as the presence of not one but two magicians on the credits (Jay and our own Andy Nyman) suggests, this is a multi-disciplinary project, the work of a young filmmaker trying several new things out - a process dramatised in the film when Penelope sets out the list of arcane activities (juggling chainsaws, playing the harp) she's undertaken during her time in seclusion. Where Brick was deliberate, the new film revels in leftfield sight gags: Weisz driving a canary yellow Lamborghini into the side of her castle, Rinko Kikuchi's silent sidekick Bang Bang assiduously peeling an apple on a steamship - only to toss the fruit overboard and start nibbling on the peel instead.

There's a renewed, relaxed pleasure in storytelling, too; just perhaps - as the film lags towards the two-hour mark - a bit too much for its own good. Certainly, Bloom's youthful follies and indiscretions require some indulgence: its narrative lines aren't always clear, and the Brody-Weisz romance is just as often forced and excruciating as charming. (At the press screening, I could sense the grumpy old men in the critical contingent getting grumpier with each passing minute.)

Again, Johnson reveals himself to know more about books and films than he does about life - a characteristic common among many young American directors - yet The Brothers Bloom, vacillating as it does throughout between the high-functioning autism of Wes Anderson and the more expansive and generous filmmaking of Paul Thomas Anderson, finally tips its bowler hat in the direction of the latter; like its characters, it at least tries to follow its heart beyond the realm of the quotation mark. It could do with a tighter rein - or, given the film's prevalence of out-of-control vehicles, a better handbrake - but there's a directorial sensibility here worth travelling with a little while longer.

The Brothers Bloom is on selected release.