Leaves of Grass (2010)

The movie starts out great. It is smart, sharp, and witty. I would highly recommend doing a quick reading on Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" on Wiki if you are unfamiliar with Whitman's work, what he was trying to accomplish, the criticism of it, as well as the fact he spent his whole life re-writing and expanding it. The movie had the feel of a five star indie in the beginning. Edward Norton, who I have yet to respect as an actor, plays two roles: Bill Kincaid and his twin brother Brad. Bill and Brad are both super intelligent. Brad, the smarter of the two when young, grows pot and enjoys life on the edge. Bill teaches classical philosophy at Brown University. Brad gets his girlfriend pregnant and in order to get Bill to come back to Oklahoma for the wedding, has his friend contact Bill and tell him that he is dead.Brad has other plans for Bill and plans to use him as an alibi. At this point the movie goes from great to WTF? The flick digresses into what appears to be a writer's inability to figure out how to end a story. Brad, as the smarter brother should of had a better scheme, one where everyone gets what they want, rather than do things by the seat of his pants. I was very disappointed in the writers for leading us down a path that would have made a great classic movie and then not being able to close the deal.

Leaves of Grass is a black comedy/drama film that stars Edward Norton, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Melanie Lynskey and Keri Russell.It is about an Ivy League classics professor becomes mixed up in his lawless identical twin's drug dealings after receiving word that his brother has been murdered, and returning to Oklahoma to discover he's been hoodwinked.This was written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson,who also appears in it.To say that Bill Kincaid is ashamed of his upbringing is an understatement at best. Turning his back on his working-class parents and working diligently to erase any traces of his Southern accent,he develops a reputation as a true scholar dedicated to excellence and philosophical exploration. His brother, Brady, on the other hand, grows weed. Arriving home to find Brady very much alive, Bill winds up mending bridges with their capricious mother, Daisy, and reluctantly agrees to help his brother out of a tight jam involving notorious drug kingpin Pug Rothbaum, who might just send both siblings to an early grave. Meanwhile, Bill can't help noticing that free-spirited poet Janet has somehow managed to find true happiness in the most unlikely surroundings.Edward Norton delivers one of his finest performances in this movie.He was both brilliant and excellent in a dual role as Bill and Brady.Also,keeps the laughs coming at a steady pace, and never condescends to the articulate redneck characters involved in the story.Also,it bubbles with intellectual curiosity and narrative ambition about examination of lost innocence and brotherhood despite the fact that it changes from one tone to another.Overall,it is a good movie to watch to stimulate one's thinking.

In spite of Edward Norton's overworked OK accent, he's a good enough actor to create two distinct characters-twins, one an ivy-league prof, the other a successful Okie pot grower. Everybody else rises to the occasion as well; even the script is good- it's the story that's the problem. If it's a comedy, it should stay a comedy IMHO, but this story, instead of developing a comedic premise into something that resolves in a comic fashion, depends on violent death to do that. So in its second half the story goes from building up a potentially hilarious situation into resolution by hollow-point ammunition. Much as did The Departed: Everybody shoots everybody else. The writer/director/actor, Tim Blake Nelson, got it off to a believable start, then seems to have thrown up his hands whenever the going got tricky, and just wiped out the troublesome characters. Deus ex machina lives, in the form of high-powered weaponry. I gave it a 5 because the acting (Edward Norton, T.B. Nelson, Keri Russell, Susan Sarandon) is first-rate. But the tone is completely inconsistent. I'm supposed to laugh at people getting their brains blown out? Maybe Nelson is trying to make a statement about "How we settle things down here in Oklahoma", or in The South, or in America? I don't know. It looks to me as if he just ran out of ideas.

This movie was hard to understand. At times it seemed to be a comedy and at other times a dark satire. Ed Norton was good playing twins. One was Bill, an educator from up north, and the other a pot selling hill billy named Brady. Brady tricks Bill into coming back to Oklahoma by saying he died. But what Brady really wants is Bill's help in getting him out from under a drug lord. Brady has been selling and growing lots of weed and wants out. He wants to use his twin as an alibi while he takes care of business. Then Brady and his sidekick do something totally out of character when confronting the drug lord. That's when the movie jumped the railroad tracks. It got really absurd from there.FINAL VERDICT: OK, but not good enough to recommend.