Barkley Michaelson, the protagonist of "Nobel Son" (2008), tells the audience, "The truth is good and bad are not so absolute." Maybe he's right in his own crazy, fast-paced, saturated world. It is difficult to say the same in the world of cinema. "Nobel Son," for sure, is bad.
Sadly, at first, the film seems to have great potential. "Nobel Son" managed to pull together a promising cast. Alan Rickman of "Sweeney Todd" (2007) stars as Eli Michaelson, a heartless chemistry professor with a huge ego resulting from his recent Nobel Prize win. His son Barkley (played by Bryan Greenberg) plans on accompanying his parents on a plane to Stockholm, but the trip quickly goes awry. Before he gets to the airport, he is kidnapped by Thaddeus James (Shawn Hatosy) and held for a $2 million ransom, the precise amount of money that accompanied the Nobel Prize.
The motives of the kidnapper are personal. The formula uses elements of a classic thriller: betrayal, dysfunctional families and revenge. Other cast members include Eliza Dushku as artsy poet City Hall, Mary Steenburgen as Barkley's forensic psychologist mother and Bill Pullman as a detective, with cameos from Danny DeVito and Ted Danson.
Unfortunately, the actors' scripted roles do not complement their impressive acting chops. Even Rickman's performance, which often involves zingers to his family and colleagues, fades quickly. More noticeably, Dushku's performance borrows heavily from lame jokes in her poetry café, clichéd one-liner pickup lines and her sex-appeal in bedroom scenes with Barkley. DeVito's turn as a "reformed obsessive compulsive" is not funny either. These actors and the other players do a B-rate job, with B-rate delivery of black comedy and emotion.
The "funny" parts of "Nobel Son" consist of Santa spewing profanity in a crowded mall and quirky poetry readings at City Hall's café. "Nobel Son" juxtaposes this dull humor as it attempts to combine allegedly intriguing subplots of violence. These scenes include the severing of thumbs (in graphic detail) and cannibalism. Needless to say, this film is definitely not for more squeamish theater-goers. Worse still, in a blatant attempt to make itself a "cultured" film, "Nobel Son" references everything from Pat Benatar's lyrics to Michel de Montaigne.
The film's arc is extremely convoluted. The plot twists are resolved at the end, but through unexpected means. The point at which the tables turn in the film's second act seems to come from nowhere. The lag time during the transition between the two scenes of action renders "Nobel Son" implausible and poorly executed. Although the audience may understand the characters' motives for what happens on a superficial level, it's clear that the film loses steam and is just desperately trying to tie up loose ends.
Directed by Randall Miller and co-written by Miller and wife Jody Savin, "Nobel Son" moves along feeling like a film school exercise of a thriller than a film with any legitimate purpose. Miller overloads his film with the "essentials" of the youth thriller genre of the '90s: light-speed cuts, use of handheld cameras, dramatic color filters, extreme close-ups and a mediocre alt-rock soundtrack. Used in this film, however, in contrast with the works that pioneered these tactics, the techniques feel trite as Miller transparently seeks to conform to the typical standards of the genre. In doing so, he sacrifices any original vision and puts his inexperience on display.
Miller's work is not good enough; he wasted the opportunity to pull off a decent thrill ride. Regardless of its seemingly promising cast, "Nobel Son" is just a cheap, ill-contrived knockoff of "Fargo" (1996) and "The Italian Job" (2003) that simply disappoints.
