The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

Sienna Miller is sweet but is never allowed to make clear why she is attracted to either man. Nick Nolte, in expensive suits, hair slicked back, takes no nonsense as the hard mob boss. Mena Suvari is pitch-perfect in a finally thankless role. Peter Sarsgaard is intriguing as the seductive, profoundly screwy Cleveland. Finally a bittersweet closing narration that seems to tie up loose ends but really answers nothing about Art, except whether he still lives in Pittsburgh.Ĭomplicating all this are some well-developed performances for such an underdeveloped screenplay. Then a crime-driven climax that arrives out of thin air and involves a very small world indeed. Cleveland's odd promotion of an emotional, if not at first sexual, menage a trois. But Art is pathologically passive the summer happens to him, but he can't be said to happen to it.Ĭomplications ensue from countless other movies: the fraught relationship with his father. The first little 'joke' Cleveland plays on Art should have sent Art running as far from Cleveland as he could get. These two mess with his mind, Jane although she doesn't mean to, Cleveland because he is a sadistic emotional manipulator. At a party, he meets the winsome blond Jane ( Sienna Miller), whose boyfriend, Cleveland ( Peter Sarsgaard), is both friendly and disturbing.

Phlox ( Mena Suvari), the store manager, pages him on the intercom for sex on demand in the stock room.

For the summer, he takes a job at a vast surplus bookstore, where the minimum wage allows him to lose himself. He'll become a broker, which in the 1980s was an honest trade. Joe would like Art to follow him into the family business, but Art wants nothing to do with it. He is the son of Joe Bechstein ( Nick Nolte), a mobster of such stature that he has his own FBI shadows. That hero is Art ( Jon Foster), whose voiceover narration does not shy away from the obvious.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon