Bottle Rocket (1996)
Directed by Wes Anderson
Upon his release from a mental hospital following a nervous breakdown, the directionless Anthony joins his friend Dignan, who seems far less sane than the former. Dignan has hatched a harebrained scheme for an as-yet-unspecified crime spree that somehow involves his former boss, the (supposedly) legendary Mr. Henry.
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8 films that influenced Bottle Rocket
What critics say influenced Bottle Rocket
With its low-key and note-perfect performances, with the filmmaker's keen eye and ear for the zany and apt detail, and with Anderson's surprisingly sophisticated visual and narrative style (think of Antonioni crossed with Woody Allen of the Take the Money and Run period), Bottle Rocket is a blast.
A cracked coming-of-age movie merged with a comic caper, the kind of flip side to “Heat” that the Italian “Big Deal on Madonna Street” was to “Rififi,” “Bottle Rocket” at times seems reminiscent of any number of things, including Donald Westlake’s wonderful Dortmunder mystery novels “Bank Shot” and “The Hot Rock.”
In fact, "Bottle Rocket" began as a college-made short that showed at Sundance and found its way to "Terms of Endearment" director James L. Brooks, who took its student creators under his wing and helped finance a full-length film.
The same kind of slightly warped Texas sophisticate humor graced "Slacker," the first film of Austin's Richard Linklater.
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Concentrating on a trio of incredibly inept criminals, there are times when this film seems like Reservoir Dogs as directed by Kevin Smith (Clerks).
And it's their off-center, wackily verbose chatter--like the crackling dialogue in "Reservoir Dogs," a kind of reverse model for "Bottle Rocket"--that makes this movie special.
The result is a comic gem of weirdness and ineptitude, an antithesis of Heat that is, in its own dorky way, cooler than Pulp Fiction.
He’s now trying to convince his buddies to join him in the exciting life of thieves, kinda like in the little-seen but very cool Vincent Gallo vehicle “Palookaville”.
Dignan is a movie treat: Part young Dennis Hopper and part old Beaver Cleaver, he's the suburban youth reimagining himself as Robert De Niro in "Heat" but getting it mixed up with Robert De Niro in "King of Comedy."
The result is a comic gem of weirdness and ineptitude, an antithesis of Heat that is, in its own dorky way, cooler than Pulp Fiction .
These aspiring felons--twentysomethings who try to set up the kind of pro outlaw crew we see in "Heat"--are a true band of outsiders, beyond the law and often beyond the pale too.