Bottle Rocket (Anderson, 1996): 6/10

"I don't know man, sometimes...I'm not always as confident as I look." - Dignan


I decided to watch Bottle Rocket as part of an ambitious plan to watch all of Wes Anderson’s films in a single week. Unfortunately pretty much as soon as I started, the Internet destroyed any chance of that happening. The unreliable Internet connection has meant that my viewing of the 92-minute film has required three whole nights of viewing. Perhaps partially as a result of my botched viewing attempts, my impression of Bottle Rocket has been pretty poor.

Anderson’s debut film contains many of the same elements that will continue to pervade his latter works. The idiosyncratic dialogue, the whimsical characters and even his use of obscure pop songs are fully evident from almost the first frame of the film. It also showcases some of his strengths as an auteur; the immaculate framing is already noticeable even at such an early stage of his career. As a result, it serves as a good introduction for anyone wanting to test their ability to endure Anderson’s body of work.

Although the film opens with the character of Anthony (played by a surprisingly good Luke Wilson) and the film is narrated by his voiceover, Bottle Rocket is mostly about the friendship between Anthony and Dignan (played by Young Owen Wilson). Technically, much of the film revolves around heists. However, saying that this is a heist film is akin to saying that Darjeeling is a film about travelling across India. Both are just plot devices that exist in the background to push things along the way. Furthermore, the usual heist elements receive the standard Anderson treatment and are used to show the awkwardness and incapability of his characters.

Noticeably, the tone of the film is very much detached from reality. His characters may be flawed, but they are fundamentally good-natured human beings. There is an innocence and utter lack of mean spirit that is almost unique to him. As his latter films will prove, Anderson’s creations exist solely in his highly controlled and singular environments. His real strength lies in his ability to connect his seemingly contrived scenarios to the audience; to enable us to feel a sense of connection to his characters. Beneath all the shenanigans and artificiality, his characters are looking for the same sense of fulfilment as us.

There are glimpses of that humanity in Bottle Rocket. Towards the middle of the film, there is scene on an abandoned road, where both Anthony and Dignan are left picking up the pieces after their first heist. It is a scene that demands your attention, because these characters immediately become ‘real’ people who sense the implications of what just happened. It is also a scene that is almost minimalist (it is an abandoned road, after all) and beautifully scripted.

Sadly, the film falls back into its habit of indulging its idiosyncratic tone almost instantly after the scene ends. In creating his precocious characters, it became extremely hard to sympathise with the protagonists. The dialogue often came off too whimsical, and created an artificiality that made it difficult to relate to the characters. Additionally, the plot drags on without any real direction. There is an over-reliance on scenes that consist largely of rambling dialogue, which is acceptable for an Anderson film, but only if you can associate with the people saying it.

On a brighter note, the performances in the film are pretty solid. The Wilson brothers both put in good performances as the two leads. Young Owen Wilson, in particular, has a strong screen presence that almost allows the self-centred character of Dignan to work. He has a likeability that balances out the often-grating behaviour of his character, at least for two-thirds of the film.

Ultimately, Bottle Rocket serves as a promising, but problematic debut film. As an introduction, it bears all the trademarks of the Wes Anderson that audiences will come to know. At this point of his career, however, Bottle Rocket is limited to being a flawed product that only hints at better things to come.