Bottle Rocket (1996)

Anthony (Luke Wilson), fresh off a stint in a mental hospital for "exhaustion", gets roped into his friend Dignan's (Owen Wilson) plan to become robbers, who will eventually join up with a crew led by Mr. Henry, the guy who fired Dignan from his landscaping job. Dignan and Anthony are joined by their friend Bob, because he has a car, but the heady rush of successfully robbing a large bookstore soon fades when Bob leaves and Anthony becomes infatuated with one of the motel housekeepers, Inez (Lumi Cavazos.)

I'm not sure I ever really get Wes Anderson movies. All these socially awkward characters who sort of bumble about in half-formed lives, am I supposed to laugh at them or pity them? Bob, Anthony and Dignan all seem dissatisfied with their lives for one reason or another. Bob's trying to grow weed in the backyard of his parents' house, while taking crap from his older brother.

Anthony just seems to be drifting, then latches onto Inez from the moment he sees her, in a way I found pretty creepy. The whole scene where she shows him the locket she keeps with a picture of her sister, and he asks if he can keep it, and does so despite her obviously being uncomfortable with it? I was supposed to root for this guy to get the girl? I'll root for someone to throw his ass in the hotel dryer and set it to High Heat. I really hoped, late in the movie when he called the motel, that Inez was long gone. On to someplace better, already having forgotten the strange, self-absorbed guy with boundary issues. Sadly, that was not the case.

Dignan, who sees becoming a successful criminal as a way to, respect, maybe. Excitement? Like a kid playing pretend, he talks about needing to use aliases and get their hair cut or dyed (though not until after the robbery), but he carries out these conversations by shouting to Anthony (seated at the pool) from the second floor hallway outside their room. It feels like a vacation he's taking much too seriously. 

The push-and-pull between he and the other two, who get sidetracked with infatuation or their brother being arrested, those are the better parts. They way they fall into this petty squabbling, with Dignan trying to pull a rank he doesn't have, because Bob and Anthony are really just using his dream as a temporary escape from their own shit. But those parts feel more like a Coen brothers movie, with the weird criminals turning on each other in stupid and hilarious ways. Maybe that's why I enjoy them more.

I was not expecting James Caan to show up as Mr. Henry, and at first he seems like as much a goofball as the others. I expected, after him dumping water on Dignan from the roof, or practicing his martial arts, that he was full of crap, and Dignan had simply swallowed it. As it turns out, Mr. Henry is full of crap, but he's also the closest thing to an actual adult in the entire movie. He knows what he wants out of life, he sets out to get it, and he does it. No deviating from the plan, no allowing sentiment to interfere or having his plan fall apart because one of his lookouts got lonely. Basically, it's like a character Caan played in some other crime flick wandered into this one, assessed it as full of rubes and said, "Sure, I'll set up shop here for a while." 

I guess I don't know that Mr. Henry is happy. Maybe he's deeply unfulfilled, and this is the best he can do to ignore that feeling. But it seems like he's the one taking real steps to make what he wants of life, rather than drifting along, waiting to see if something good comes into his orbit (Bob), or just blundering vaguely in the direction of an idea (Dignan).