Review of Leaves of Grass (2009) by Karrie V — 25 Apr 2012

The only thing I liked about this film was the way that Tim Blake Nelson portrayed Oklahoma. He's from Tulsa, so I'm sure he represented people that he knew. He doesn't treat them terribly, but he tries to look at them honestly.

I give him credit for that. However, I would like to point out the script is messy and a lot of things seem to happen just because he thinks they work for the moment. At first I thought I was going to say that Josh Pais's character was my favorite part of the film, but then he does some really ridiculous thing in the end of the movie that doesn't really make sense.

I'll get to that later to avoid spoilers. So Bill Kincaid is a successful philosopher and a professor that everyone loves. He's crazy busy and has no life. His brother Brady was equally as smart, but he decided to use his intelligence for criminal purposes.

It's an interesting concept to follow, but his brilliance needed to be more apparent. Yes, someone can be smart and use it in the wrong way, but it was never really proven in this film other than showing him grow his weed.

Perhaps they thought that was enough, but I still thought he was too stupid to come up with the alibi scheme. There's a scene where he talks about reading one of Bill's books and he said the only word he didn't know was epistemology.

Really? That's funny because in a few moments he's about to say he doesn't know what antisemitic means. So he got through an entire 20 page essay without needing the dictionary but once and he doesn't know the word antisemitic? However, I did like the idea that he read his brother's works even though he most likely didn't understand what they were about.

The film's message is important, explaining if someone is there loving you and wants your love then you should give it to them. But Bill won't even give them the respect of returning their phone calls.

It's another strong part of the film. Seeing Bill go back to his home town and be angry that his brother had to fake his murder to get his brother to come out and see him is pretty big. This makes sense when we know that his brother has some illegal scheme up his sleeve.

I think the moment could have been made stronger if Brady said that he didn't answer when he truly needed him during an innocent time. I was also a fan of the change of pace in the end with the violence.

However, I felt like the characters had no motivation for the violence other than Tim Blake Nelson thinking it was cool to switch things up. I get it, Ken Feinman comes by which is a good tie-in to the beginning of the film where Bill meets him on the plain.

But why did he want to kill Brady? Yes, he killed his father, but why not call the cops? And what was he trying to accomplish? He's down on money and needs to cover his debts. I think that Brady did him a favor, because certainly he got some money from his father's death.

Was he getting money from his father before that? I guess it would make sense why he moved there, but I don't remember him ever saying so. When he shoots Brady it just seemed like he didn't actually mean to, but him slipping on the trigger didn't make sense either.

Just fortunate for the script. Same goes for Bill shooting Ken. I wanted something more to come from it. Then Bill going to the drug dealer without protection and thinking he can yell at him in his own domain and demand money was just stupid.

Nothing in the end really worked for me. His relationship with the poet also seemed pretty pointless. Perhaps it was just to give him something more than nothing in the end? I just thought too much of the film felt sloppy and like Edward Norton got ahold of the script and changed it too much.

Perhaps. Or maybe it was just sloppy to begin with. Either way, I was disappointed by how weak this turned out to be.