Review of Leaves of Grass (2009) by Vicky G — 16 Oct 2010

"Eye of God" writer & director Tim Blake Nelson imitates the quirky Cohen brothers with mixed results. "Leaves of Grass" unfolds like leaves being blown all over creation. Essentially, this schizophrenic saga bounces like a ball in a pin-ball machine, ringing up comedy one minute, tragedy the next minute as well as romance and crime. Nevertheless, despite its wholly uneven quality, Nelson's film manages to be a somewhat palatable 'fish-out-of-water' saga about identical twin brothers who reside in separate worlds. "Leaves of Grass" concerns itself with the themes of reconciliation and redemption. Nelson's high-minded morality play is never threadbare, but he veers too suddenly from one genre to another for it to be believable. The cast deliver good performances. Edward Norton fares better as Ivy League college philosophy professor Bill Kincaid than he does as his savvy twin brother Brady Kincaid who lives in Oklahoma. While Bill teaches college, Brady grows premium cannabis with an elaborate indoor hydroponics system. The chief villain, a ruthless Jewish businessman named Pug.

Rothbaum (Richard Dreyfuss of "Jaws") demands that Brady supplement his pot with meth, but Brady refuses to cook. Bill shows up to visit with Brady and winds up entangled in a web of deception. Poor Bill is already in harm's way at the university where he teaches because a staff worker walks into his faculty office and finds a partially disrobed coed in his lap. While Bill is weathering the fall-out from this bad timing, Brady persuades him to come back home and visit their mother (Susan Sarandon of "Thelma and Louise"), but Brady is up to no good. Principally, he wants his estranged brother to return home to Little Dixie so he can travel up to Tulsa and murder Pug. Moreover, Brady spray-paints red swastikas on the man's property to make it appear like a hate crime. Predictably, Bill is outraged because Brady has used him as a physical alibi. Meanwhile, Bill conducts a romance with a cat-fish fishing poet (Keri Russell of "Extraordinary Measures") who who quotes Whitman. The last 30 minutes of this 104 minute melodrama go from one extreme to another and serious things occur. The violence is incredible, particularly when a villain shoots Bill in the back with a barbed-tipped cross-bow arrow. This scene is pretty gripping. Nelson plays Brady's redneck buddy Bolger.