Bottle Rocket

Year: 1996 - Columbia Pictures
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson
Starring: Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Robert Musgrave, Lumi Cavazos, James Caan, Jim Ponds, Kumar Pallana, and Andrew Wilson

"Did you bring the grappling hook?"

Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket has a great screenplay. The script is full of irony and slapstick comedy. The characters are very original and compelling. Unfortunately, this movie about some bungling criminals gets badly bungled itself. At least that what I thought the first three times I saw this movie. Then, a strange thing happened when I viewed this film for the fourth time. I started to look forward to certain scenes. I began to sympathize with the pathetic characters as I often do with the hapless Barney Fife. By the fifth viewing I was hooked. I began to see all of the irony I missed on the first viewings. I realized I was completely wrong about this movie (as many had told me). This film is a gem.

Anthony and Dignan, played by Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson respectfully, are a couple of twenty-something, big-time slacking buddies. The film opens with Anthony being discharged from a mental facility. To appease his life-long friend, Dignan, Anthony pretends he is escaping from the facility by sliding down tied bed sheets. Dignan does not know that Anthony was there voluntarily and Anthony does not want to spoil the fun of a breakout for his friend. Dignan is a pathetic loser who has never been successful at anything. The only job he had, working as a laborer for a landscaping company, he was fired from. Dignan is obsessed with becoming a big-time criminal. He even has a five, twenty-five, and seventy-five year plan on how to achieve his goal. The trouble is, Dignan's concept of the big-time criminal is pretty much in line with that of a twelve year-old boy who watches a lot of cheesy movies and television shows. Anthony only seems to go along out of misguided loyalty to his friend. To help in their capers they enlist the help of a friend, Bob, played by Robert Musgrave, as the getaway driver. The only qualification Bob has is the fact that he is the only one of the three that has a car.

The objective of Dignan's career choice is not the money, (he spends the loot on bottle rockets and firecrackers), but the planning and executing of a precise, complex caper. He loves the surveillance, the code words, the stop watches, the walkie-talkies, the guns, the clever banter, and the notoriety of the Hollywood criminal. In a television show, all of the criminals wear matching outfits so that the audience can keep track of them. Dignan emulates that by having his whole crew wear bright orange jumpsuits during a daytime robbery. He wants everyone to know he is a criminal to try to elicit some respect from them. Dignan literally shouts out loud information that no criminal would want strangers to know when trying to conceal a crime. One gets the feeling that when Dignan ultimately gets caught and put in prison, he has finally received the validation and the recognition he craves.

This film's strength lies in its subtlety. Conversation is obscured in a way that is reminiscent of Robert Altman's style of film dialogue. This requires a lot more concentration by the viewer than I was willing to give this film at first. What I found infuriating about this film in my first viewing was why these characters showed loyalty to people who ridiculed or physically harmed them. I always wondered why in the Three Stooges, Larry and Curly hung around Moe. Screenwriters, Anderson and Wilson use this strange, illogical human behavior as the central theme of their movie. Dignan wants to be a bigtime criminal in order to impress his former boss, an aspiring criminal himself. Bob helps get his brother out of jail even though his brother regularly beats him. Anthony sticks by Dignan even though his friend causes him nothing but trouble. The irony of this misplaced loyalty is effectively exposed in this film in way that is funny in spite of its pathos.

The cast does a fine job with the exception of James Caan, as a small-time hood, who sleep walks through this movie. A particularly great casting choice is Lumi Cavazos as Inez, Anthony's love interest. The film comes alive whenever she is on the screen. Her honest performance brings real pathos to Anthony and Inez's romance.

Interestingly, this film is based on a short black and white film of the same name by Wes Anderson. I would be anxious to see what it was about that short film that prompted Columbia Pictures to support a full-fledged feature. While I feel Rushmore is a better film, this movie is an excellent first piece by a talented young director.

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