If you can get through the excruciatingly irritating prologue with the whimsical narrator expounding the backstory in whimsical rhyme like a bad case of Pushing Daises, then perhaps you might not find what follows so bad. Chances are slim, however.

Getting through one foster family after another, the Bloom brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and, er, Bloom (Adrien Brody) grow up to become master con artists, working with Bang Bang (Rino Kikuchi), a taciturn Japanese accomplice who barely speaks more than three words into the entire film. Taking off to Montenegro on a fit of angst, Bloom declares he wants out but is persuaded by Stephen to pull one last con involving ditzy, bored American heiress Penelope (Rachel Weisz). Naturally romantic complications ensue, which makes Bloom get second thoughts about the sting.

Except, you’re never quite sure who’s conning who or whether Stephen’s set this up so he can write his brother into a love affair he’d never develop off his own bat.
Throw in a one eyed former nemesis by the name of Diamond Dog and a dodgy fence cum partner played by Robbie Coltrane with a bad French (?) accent, and it all becomes very complicated and confusing (especially in its rather fluid sense of period), but, unfortunately, not engaging or interesting enough to stick with and find out what’s really going on.

A major disappointment after debut film Brick, it could have been Dirty Rotten Scoundrels meets The Spanish Prisoner but director Rian Johnson seems more interested in being Wes Anderson than making a film to entertain audiences and the whole thing collapses under the weight of its attempts to be hip.