Nobel Son

Freestyle Releasing | Release Date: December 5, 2008

7.3	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Ratings

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JayH.Mar 7, 2009

Very uneven film, but it misses the mark overall. There were just too many slow patches, and I just could not get into the film, even after several attempts to start it over from the beginning. Mary Steenburgen is great though.

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ChadS.Dec 12, 2008

There's an intruder in the house. Unless he's psychic, the intruder should be waiting outside his girlfriend's place. How does he know that Barkley(Brian Greenberg) has the instincts of a twelve-year-old boy and returns home? There's an intruder in the house. Unless he's psychic, the intruder should be waiting outside his girlfriend's place. How does he know that Barkley(Brian Greenberg) has the instincts of a twelve-year-old boy and returns home? Since the Nobel Prize laureate's son is late for his ride to the airport, it's a bit of a plot contrivance that this cannibal expert doesn't meet up with mom and dad at the airline terminal, hopefully before they board the plane and go to Sweden without him. Evidently, the screenwriter wanted Brian to be kidnapped at home, so he goes home, instead of using a cellular phone to find out where they are. So Brian is kidnapped, while kidnapped, he learns that his father(Alan Rickman) is a bigger d*** than he previously thought. And overreacts; Barkley joins forces with Thaddeus(Shawn Hatosy) and collects half of the ransom money(shades of Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"). Unlike the two brothers in the Lumet film, however, Brian is an academic, not a "loser" like the Ethan Hawke and Phillip Seymour Hoffman characters; his foray in crime, again, seems like a plot contrivance, because it's psychologically unmotivated. And then there's the drop-off point for the ransom money, a mall of all places, teeming with people, a place where so many things could go wrong. The scheme with the two cars took a whole lot of panache to pull off, but it's hopelessly convoluted, bordering on the nonsensical. "Nobel Son" is a series of plot twists interspersed with an unconvincing family drama. If your main character is writing his master's thesis on cannibalism, and he doesn't eat his father in the end: Why bother?… Expand

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