See It or Skip It: Nobel Son

Stuck in a no-man’s-land between family drama, caper flick and acerbic comedy, Nobel Son stars Alan Rickman as Nobel Prize-nominated Professor Eli Michaelson. When his son, Barkley (October Road’s Bryan Greenberg), is kidnapped on the eve of his acceptance of the award, he is forced to pay $2 million in his prize winnings as ransom while stumbling into a swirling plot of deception and retribution.

Directed and edited by Randall Miller (it’s never a good sign when the director is the editor, they never know when to kill their babies), the film features a number of actors from Miller’s far superior, actually lucid film Bottle Shock including Rickman, who delivers one of his signature, scenery-chewing, I’m-so-bad-I’m-good performances, and Bill Pullman as Detective Max Mariner, a mumbling, extraneous police investigator shoehorned into an already incoherent plot.

Mary Steenburgen, Shawn Hatosy and Eliza Dushku with a totally gratuitious nude ass shot (which does explain how she keeps getting cast; her acting is atrocious but her ass is bodacious) round out the cast of this over-amped, under-conceived melee that features an ear-splintering, completely misdirected soundtrack by Paul Oakenfold.

It wants to be The Italian Job meets The Grifters meets Ordinary People.

It ends up being a MESS.

Skip it!