The Darjeeling Limited

What’s the Story?

Writer-director Wes Anderson is a master at capturing eccentricities and emotional baggage. His latest characters, co-created by film-industry cousins Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, are three brothers who've reunited after a year of not speaking to take a life-changing trip through India on a luxury train. The brothers are Francis (Owen Wilson), who planned the journey and shows up with a heavily bandaged face; Peter (Adrien Brody), who left his seven-months-pregnant wife for the trip; and Jack (Schwartzman), a short-story writer with a thing for the train's pretty first-class attendant. Accompanying the trio is a massive amount of numbered, monogrammed Louis Vuitton luggage -- the brand signifies a large fortune, and the monogram belongs to their dead father. The train ride is just the first act. After they're thrown off for a laundry list of transgressions -- including bedding an on-duty employee, smoking in their compartment, and smuggling a poisonous snake on board -- the brothers end up in a small Indian village where they witness a tragic incident that changes their outlook ... and the tone of the film.

Is It Any Good?

Anderson's tale of slightly twisted brothers is worth seeing, mostly for the performances and the landscapes, but it also lacks a cohesiveness. Part upscale family road trip and part spiritual journey, it's funny and poignant -- but far from perfect.

The extravagant, ever-present luggage -- as any 11th-grade English student could assess -- is the literal representation of years of dysfunction. The brothers, particularly Francis, keep mentioning "how we were raised," but beyond the fact that their father is dead and their mother (Anjelica Huston) is prone to running away (she's a nun near the Himalayas), just how they were brought up to become so idiosyncratic remains a mystery. Once the brothers are kicked off the train the film segues into mood-capturing cinematography, and this portion of the film is also remarkable because there's very little dialogue. There's also a fascinating, almost silent performance by revelatory Indian actor Irfan Khan as a grieving father.