The film stars Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rinko Kikuchi, Maximilian Schell, and Robbie Coltrane.

13-year-old Stephen dreams up an elaborate scenario to encourage his younger brother, Bloom, to talk to a girl, and the plan becomes their first confidence trick.

Three months later, Stephen finds Bloom in Montenegro and convinces him to execute one final con: their target is Penelope Stamp, a wealthy heiress living alone in her New Jersey mansion.

Bloom inserts himself into Penelope's isolated life by running into her sports car on a bicycle, and they bond over her eccentric array of hobbies, including various musical instruments, chainsaw juggling, and pinhole photography.

Arriving at an abandoned theater, Bloom finds Stephen badly beaten and held at gunpoint, and a phone call from Diamond Dog confirms that he has double-crossed the brothers.

Bloom asks whether this was real, and Stephen leaps to his feet, assuring his brother that he is fine, and tells him to go on the run with Penelope and that they will meet again.

[10] The script was challenging for Johnson to write because he wanted to create a character-based con man film with an "emotional payoff", while including all the storytelling aspects of the genre.

This included banjo, violin, guitar, piano, juggling, break dancing, skateboarding, giraffe unicycle, and card tricks, among others.

Three songs in the film are not available on the soundtrack: "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You" by Bob Dylan, "Miles from Nowhere" by Cat Stevens, and "Sleeping" by The Band, which was performed karaoke-style by Rinko Kikuchi.

In a digitally-released soundtrack companion booklet, Nathan Johnson said that since the film was about storytelling, it made sense to use lyric-based songs as an inspiration.

At the Newport Beach Film Fest Johnson won a festival honors award in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Directing.

[22] Claudia Puig writing for USA Today stated that the film "has it all" with an "offbeat perspective" and "magical realism style that works exquisitely".

She gave The Brothers Bloom a 3.5 out of 4 and wrote that it "is an often rapturous trot around the globe" but noted that the film "loses some steam in the final half hour.

"[23] Robert Wilonsky thought that Johnson had "infused The Brothers Bloom with so much heart and beauty that one can and should easily overlook its discomfiting moments."

[25] Robert Abele's review of The Brothers Bloom for the Los Angeles Times criticized Brody for over-moping and considered Ruffalo as "out of sorts" but thought Weisz's performance as "the best thing in the movie".