"Eye of God" writer & director Tim Blake Nelson tries to imitate the black comedic efforts of the Cohen brothers with mixed results. "Leaves of Grass" unfolds like leaves getting blown all over creation. Essentially, this schizophrenic saga bounces one way or another among comedy, tragedy, romance, and crime thriller. Nevertheless, despite its wildly uneven quality, Nelson's film is an entertaining 'fish-out-of-water' saga about identical twin brothers who reside in separate worlds. "Leaves of Grass" deals with the themes of reconciliation and redemption. Nelson's morality play is never threadbare, but he veers too suddenly from one genre to another for this to qualify as a truly palatable movie. 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 indoors hydroponics system. The chief villain, a ruthless Jewish businessman named Pug ( 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 inopportune 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 catfish fishing poet (Keri Russell) 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. Director Nelson plays Brady's redneck buddy Bolger.
Review of Leaves of Grass
