Nobel Son Reviews
Top Critic
Is it a thriller? Is it a heist movie? Is it a comedy?
I had high hopes for Nobel Son at the halfway point, but it ultimately really completely collapses under the weight of its clever twists.
The plot twists are mostly predicated on the characters' improbably shifting loyalties, the sort of thing you can get away with only when the people in your movie are drained of all compassion.
It's one of those films stuffed with odd characters in overblown situations. Unfortunately, you don't care about any of them.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Even if you can summon some admiration for Nobel Son's editing or snippets of clever dialogue, the movie is so relentlessly self-congratulatory, you can't help becoming thoroughly sick of it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Only when Nobel Son stops trying so hard does it have any appeal at all.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Like the worst of holiday quarrels, it's much more irritating than interesting, and by the end of it you'll be filled with as much seasonal cheer as Ebenezer Scrooge.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Except for a mildly engaging heist scene in the middle of the movie, the story never gets within a mile of the Quentin Tarantino classics it tries to evoke.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
A snarky, blackly comic crime drama, the whole thing unfolds like the feverish Welsh Rarebit dream of Guy Ritchie's chauffeur.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Fans of Rickman will appreciate the actor's sneering mix of buffoonery and misanthropy, Steenburgen gives another of her playfully ironic turns, and Miller's direction allows for few, if any, lulls.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Nobel Son is a dreary little thriller that irritates more than it thrills.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Nobel Son isn't funny enough for black comedy, nor suspenseful enough for a thriller; for all its flashy flailings and thumb-slicings, it's ultimately a little dull.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
[An] uneven but enjoyably titillating black comedy.
It's all wildly implausible and occasionally fun, but it could be so much better if director Randall Miller had thrown in a little more character development and excised a half-dozen crazy plot twists.
Nobel Son is as darkly funny as it is exhilarating.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Not flagrant enough to be vile, not original enough to be any good, Nobel Son does offer a rare opportunity to see Alan Rickman at his worst.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
An aggressively noisy exercise in style over substance about nasty people doing nasty things to one another in (sigh) Southern California.
| Original Score: 2.5/5
I enjoyed Eliza Dushku's mad poetess, probably for the wrong reasons, but with a project this meager, you take your artful sneers and scenic diversions where you can get them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
The plot by itself could have become tiresome; no audience enjoys spending all evening walking into stone walls. But the acting is another matter.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Although sometimes too self-consciously odd for its own good, the film is at times rollicking good fun, with Alan Rickman having a ball offending everyone within earshot as the brilliant, self-centered Eli Michaelson.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
The director, Randall Miller, appears to be trying to cross a bad Elmore Leonard thriller with a bad indie-festival family-angst comedy.
Full Review
| Original Score: D
Lacking the polish and coherence worthy of its cast, Nobel Son is no prize winner.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
