The "Brothers Bloom" has a great cast and fine acting.It has lush, amazingly varied scenery--St. Petersburg, Prague, Mexico, Montenegro, Japan, etc.It has decent direction.But it doesn't work. The problem is the writing. The movie can't decide whether to be a Romantic Comedy, a Romantic Tragedy, a Caper movie, a Rival Brothers movie, a Character Study, or any of several other things.It ends up trying to do all these things, and doing them all badly.Throwing in quirky characters helps, but only temporarily.Ultimately, the movie lacks energy. Lacks tension. Lacks conflict. Lacks suspense. Lacks coherence.It has lots of ideas, lots of (paper-thin) plot, lots of beauty, even lots of interesting lines, but none of these work together.Pity.It is no accident that by far the most interesting character is Bang Bang--who has no lines.Without a coherent script, no movie can succeed.