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Movie:		3.0
Picture:		3.0
Sound:		4.0
Extras:		4.0
Score:		3.0

Director(s):	Randall Miller
Writer(s):	Randall Miller, Jody Savin
Starring:	Bill Pullman • Bryan Greenberg • Danny DeVito • Eliza Dushku • Ernie Hudson • Mary Steenburgen • Shawn Hatosy • Ted Danson • Tracey Walter
Genre:	Drama
Website:	http://www.nobelsonthemovie.com/
Release Date:	June 09, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	DVD - $19.98
Amazon:

It took some checking, but I finally figured it out: this is the year 2009. With a little bit more fact checking, I was able to determine that Pulp Fiction came out in 1994, a full fifteen years ago. I figured the statute of limitations on wearing another film’s influence on your sleeve runs out at about five years, but here’s Nobel Son, a heist/kidnapping/general criminal plot film that simply drips with the residue that Tarantino left behind him when he first blustered through film-making last century. No, there are no overlapping storylines or long dissertations on the hidden meaning of various pop culture icons. Tarantino certainly doesn’t have any kind of copyright on criminal films considering he was arguably bested by L.A. Confidential a few years after his own masterpiece. But if you look at the details of this film - the waving of handguns directly at the camera, the posturing of the dialogue, the way that people utilize the f-word - it’s all there.

Eli Michaelson (Alan Rickman) is a great big jackass, and the kind of professor that everyone fears having; think of him as the male counterpart to Helen Mirren’s role in Teaching Mrs. Tingle, which was another really bad movie. He’s arrogant, self-serving, and completely indifferent to whether or not you learn anything, which is bad enough, but he treats his adult son Brett (Bryan Greenberg) with similar disdain. To make things worse, he’s just won the Nobel Prize, which only justifies his behavior (to him), as he tells his class (who inexplicably claps as he tells them this). Because the film needs to have a plot, Brett is kidnapped by Thaddeus James (Shawn Hatosy) and held for a ransom of a million dollars, nearly all of Eli’s Nobel Prize winnings. The plot grows increasingly complicated from there, and I’m not sure exactly when it gets into official spoiler territory, but I will say that this film has a huge cast that includes Mary Steenburgen as Eli’s wife Sarah, Bill Pullman as a detective on the case, and Eliza Dushku as City Hall, a girl that Brett sleeps with.

You know the kind of music that’s in the background of most car commercials and scenes where criminals are breaking into banks that’s kind of like techno but you couldn’t dance to it? That music plays in the background of nearly every scene in the film. It doesn’t matter what people are doing (sitting, talking, farting, all of which do occur), the soundtrack is signaling to us that we’re supposed to get excited when what we’re seeing on screen says distinctly otherwise. It’s the first of the movie’s many miscalculations, but it does set the tone for everything else surrounding it. Why are all of these character actors being treated like leads? Why are they talking to each other like they’re in a Michael Bay-directed car commercial? Furthermore, why are we supposed to like any of them? The entire premise of the film is centered on one character being a giant douche, but none of the rest of them is especially likable or personable, even after being kidnapped, cheated on, or suffering decades of emotional abuse. What it really comes down to is that none of these characters belongs in a movie like this, nor is the setting (elite academia) an appropriate one for a damned kidnapping. These different elements collide with such a confusing thud that by the time the subplots start piling on, there’s simply nothing to grab onto, and it all passes by without the slightest accumulating effect.

DVD Bonus Features

The disc also contains a featurette about the making of the film, which is mostly the actors talking about how good the film’s writing is (projection?). There is also a commentary by Randall Miller, Jody Savin, Mike Ozier, Bryan Greenberg, and Eliza Dushku which is mostly production tidbits, as well as a few deleted scenes and the red band trailer.