This is the 1st piece in my Wes Anderson Project where I’ll be watching and writing about every Wes Anderson film. Check out the intro to the series if you want to know what the hell this is all about.
The very first feature film from Wes Anderson came in 1996. Bottle Rocket is often cited as a “favorite film of the 90s” by such film-making luminaries as Martin Scorsese. Bottle Rocket is not only Anderson’s debut as a director and writer, but also the first feature films for Owen Wilson and slightly less famous younger brother Luke Wilson.
The plot of the film follows two mostly hapless twenty-somethings, Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Anthony (Luke Wilson) as they embark on their new chose vocation of professional thieves. Over the course of Dignan’s “75 year plan” the duo sees themselves making their names as “gentlemen thieves” performing daring flashy heists. Dignan sees himself as a Danny Ocean type, the man with the plan, while Anthony coasts along in Dignan’s over-confident wake. Over the course of the movie their friendship is tested, Anthony finds inspiration, and Dignan’s enduring optimism is challenged.
The film actually started it’s life as a 1993 short-film also titled Bottle Rocket. In the short-film Dignan and Anthony perform a “practice heist” of Anthony’s parent’s house before recruiting their pal Bob (Robert Musgrave) as a get-away driver for their big heist of a book store. The 1996 feature film follows this same structure but then carries through beyond the book store job to show the experience of our “heroes” after they’ve started their new life of crime.
Spoiler Warning
In this piece I’ll try not to spoil every moment of the film but I will be discussing and dissecting elements of the film in detail. Beyond this point expect and be prepared for spoilers. You have been warned.
Highlights
The absolute best element of the film for my money is the immense chemistry between the two main characters Anthony and Dignan. The lifetime of real-world comfort between the two Wilson brothers shines through here. And we get to see clear genesis of the acting style both will go one to reprise for long very active careers. Owen Wilson finds his weird marriage of affability and unearned bravado that he’d go on to show time and time again throughout his career. Luke Wilson plays the easy-going every man.
The opening and scene and closing scenes work together as great bookends to this movie. In the opening Dignan cooks up an elaborate scheme to “break” Anthony out of the mental institution while Anthony casually explains the silly situation to his doctor. And the film closes with Dignan jokingly planning his own “break out” from Prison.
I thought it was pretty cool that the “practice heist” on Anthony’s family home was basically unchanged from the original short film. Beat-for-beat it was almost identical but filmed in color instead of the orignal short’s black-and-white.
Our main characters exist in a strange bubble of “innocence” seemingly incapable of real wrongdoing despite having chosen a life of petty crime that they play up for themselves as high minded heisting. The final heist displays Dignan sacrifices his freedom to get all his guys “out” alive, while his mentor Mr. Henry (James Caan) secretly robs Bob’s family home. Dignan in this moment shows his best quality of intense loyalty and doesn’t let the disloyalty of Mr. Henry bring him down.
Lowlights
The middle act of the film is taken up by an odd “love story” between Anthony and Inez (Lumi Cavazos) a housekeeper at the small motel where the boys hide out after their big book store job. Seemingly Anthony just falls in love without any real reasoning for it. He follows her around for awhile seemingly wearing her down to the point where she falls in love too. A series of misunderstandings mostly surrounding the fact that they don’t speak the same language leads Anthony to finally leave her be. And the experience inspires him to finally grow up and find some purpose. This whole arc comes across as unearned, the whole line in the story could have just read “and then they fell in love” and it would have had the same weight.
Wes Anderson Check-In
Anderson was only 26 years old at the time Bottle Rocket came out and he had not yet grown into the distinctive style that would define his later work. You could find some examples of some shot composition and “planing” of the background if you tried, but as a whole those stylistic touches seem incidental. When it comes to cinematography and design; this film does not feel like a Wes Anderson film, it feels like a much more standard modern film.
The script and the writing do come across very similar to Anderson’s later work. The film doesn’t spend too much time probing its characters’ motivations. It doesn’t answer questions about their origins. They exist in this film, they do things that don’t seem to follow our real world logic. And they end in a different place than they started. The characters are only as deep as the story in this particular film.
The fact that these characters are depicted by Owen and Luke Wilson, actors who would go on to make several appearances in later Wes Anderson films, certainly helps bridge the gap and make Bottle Rocket fit with the rest of the director’s oeuvre. But if I hadn’t known going in I could have come out the other end of this movie not having realized Wes Anderson was behind it.
Bottom Line
In the context of watching a movie in 2024, I don’t think Bottle Rocket is required viewing. There is only the barest sense of what Wes Anderson would become in this film. The movie is actually a bit more interesting as an origin point for the Wilson brothers as their future feels much more “connected” to what we see on screen in Bottle Rocket you can see a pretty clear path from Luke Wilson’s Anthony to his later work in Idiocracy. You can see a direct path from Dignan to Owen Wilson’s later work in something like Midnight in Paris.
Bottle Rocket is interesting as a time capsule of three young men who would go on to have long successful careers in Hollywood. And it’s particular great to see the two brothers acting together and displaying incredible chemistry. But I would recommend this movie to most casual viewers.
Next up: Rushmore