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Barely dramatic, thematic but enigmatic, that's Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. His Stranger than Paradise was exactly that, a Cleveland road trip to existential uncertainty. In Broken Flowers, Bill Murray as Don Johnston is also on a trip, but more certain of his goal than anyone in Stranger, for he seeks out his alleged son by visiting former lovers, one of whom anonymously wrote that she had borne him a child 19 years ago.

The formidable women, including a randy Sharon Stone happily lampooning her film persona and Tilda Swinton, tougher and more dangerous than all the others in her biker mom role, never really sway him from seeking his son or finding himself. Beyond discovering that you can't change the past of "an over-the-hill Don Juan," much less understand him, reflected in the depressing but authentic lack of communication with all but one of his wives, Murray may have discovered on his low-key picaresque a truer self than he had ever known before. He may be beaten up physically, he may be unable to close the case of his putative son, and he may have divorced himself from his millionaire persona as a computer whiz, but he remains a deeply calm, lonely wanderer in his effort to solve his case.

An amateur detective, neighbor Winston has the spirit and energy Don does not have, yet Don is deeper and more reflective. In fact he outstrips all of his former loves in kindness and caring in calm response to often explosive situations, for instance when Stone's daughter, Lolita, comes on to him only to find he is not available.

I complain American films are not sophisticated like Euro flicks, but Jarmusch has come close with this slow, laconic, and demanding indie. Hats off to Bill Murray for mixing minimalist with passionate this time around—his purpose and his change of character make his aging Hollywood star Bob from Lost in Translation just a dress rehearsal for this Oscar-worthy performance and film.

Perhaps Don's discovery is twofold: his potential to love others and himself. As Alexander Smith declared, "Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."

Broken Flowers is a departure for Jim Jarmusch, and not an altogether successful one. This film is decidedly more mainstream than anything Jarmusch has directed before. He inserts product from mapquest.com, Sharp, and Ford Taurus; shoots in color; and writes a character being admonished for smoking for starters. This isn't as radical a shift to mainstream as George Lucas going from THX-1138 to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. It's more like the Cohen brothers going from Blood Simple to Intolerable Cruelty.

Broken Flowers is highly structured and deliberately paced (i.e. slow), with an episodic format. Murray's character, Don Johnston, tries to reveal the identity of the woman who alerts him to the existence of his son, awkwardly reuniting with a succession of old flames. Murray's portrayal is fun to watch, and Sharon Stone is still magically delicious. The film has interesting things to say about the suburbs, the path not taken, bachelorhood, and the banality of travel. But it says little and hardly engages. It is the Odyssey with no reason to return home.

There are movies which are lots of action interrupted by occasional pauses. Those are the movies people tend to enjoy. Unfortunately Broken Flowers is a movie of pauses interrupted by occasional action. Director Jim Jarmusch lays out his story in excruciatingly slow fashion. It's a road trip story, Bill Murray playing Don Johnston, an aging man criss-crossing the country for reasons we'll get to in a bit. Don has a few important stops on his journey. Sadly Jarmusch wastes way too much time on the travel between those stops. The movie is a seemingly endless succession of shots of the countryside flying by outside Don's car window. There are only so many hills and houses you can see go by before you are screaming "Get on with it already!" at the screen. There is just way too much time in this movie where absolutely nothing is happening. What makes it worse is that it's the same nothing over and over again, all those scenic shots backed by the same repeated musical cues which frustratingly burrow deep inside your brain. When we met Don Johnston it was obvious he was a man who had pretty much checked out on life. He didn't care about anything. The way his story is presented here won't make you care either.

Don is a retired guy, living a quiet life which consists of pretty much nothing but sitting on his couch. He is pushed into action when he receives a mysterious letter from a woman saying he fathered a child with her about twenty years ago and that her son, his son, is now looking for him. The letter is not signed, no indication who it could be from. And apparently Don was quite the ladies' man back in the day because there are five possibilities as to who the mother could be. So now Don must leap off his couch and go find out who the mother is right? Well, no, not at all actually. Don doesn't care about the letter, has no interest in this hypothetical son with the mystery mother. But with some insistent prodding from an exceedingly enthusiastic, and annoying, neighbor, Don sets out on a journey to track down all these old flames and discover the truth. So Don gets on a plane, flies somewhere, gets into his rental car and the movie at this point grinds to a screeching halt.

Don meets up with four women, the fifth having died a few years earlier. These meetings have their entertaining moments. They also have plenty of awkward moments. At some stops Don is greeted warmly, at others not so much. The four women he meets have very different lives, each with life circumstances which are unusual in their own way. One with a teenage daughter who lives up to her name of Lolita, one who's a cat whisperer, one desperately sad, one curiously angry. Of the group Sharon Stone and Jessica Lange get the meatier, and quirkier, parts to play and do well with them. Murray is pretty much just left to react to whatever he is confronted with at each stop. He certainly portrays Don's world-weariness, and road-weariness, well. But the movie really leaves the audience feeling weary. There's just never enough going on. So much time is wasted. And as Don moves from woman to woman the whole thing becomes so repetitive. After the endless lulls when he meets the next woman on his list you desperately want the movie to perk up, for something big to happen. But the movie falls into the trap where it's basically just the same thing again and again. Nothing ever really happens. Don is searching for answers, searching for himself. But in this case it is the audience which never really finds what it is looking for.

This according to some people is Jim Jamusch's mainstream movie, well to me it is still an independent movie it just so happens that everyone likes it and rightly so. It is a subtle tale filled with meditations on life, ageing, love and loss. The film opens with a pink letter and the viewer sort of follows it on a mini road trip from post box to sort room to final delivery. It is a beautiful metaphor for the journey you are about to undertake with Bill Murray's character Don Johnston. Everything in this film is set up so well from Don's name (a cross between Don Johnson of Miami vice fame and Don Juan, both smooth ladies men in their own right) to the underage daughter of one of don's old flames called Lolita. The style of the film is paced slow allowing you time to wonder at Murray's dead dead dead pan delivery, it's the stuff that made watching him so enjoyable in 'The life aquatic' and 'lost in translation' but turned up a notch. From opening the anonymous letter to his subsequent journey through ex-girlfriends to try and find who sent it and if he really has a twenty-year-old son as the letter states, is beautifully crafted to keep you glued to the screen. It has elements of comedy but not so much jokes as more the absurdity of life and bizarre situations that can arise. The characters are so diverse your bound to spot someone you know in one of them. One of my favourite things about this film is how it addresses wanting children from a mans point of view, Don constantly says to his neighbour that he's not interested in finding out or even going and then he does the opposite, it is the male equivalent of being broody and it ends up with Don clutching at straws and almost saying 'someone, anyone please be my son?' With a well-chosen eclectic soundtrack from Jarmusch complimenting scene after scene the film flows from comedic highs to tender lows. Here Jim and Bill have committed a very special blend of cinematic magic to the screen, one that should be a good way for a mainstream audience to enjoy an indie film and realise it doesn't have to be all CGI and explosions to be brilliant film-making.

Broken Flowers, is about a lonely and quiet bachelor named Don Johnston, who lives in a big house and basically lies around all day. Don, recently breaks up with his girlfriend Sherry. Don, lives next door to an interesting man named Winston, who likes to look up information and investigate people on the internet. One day Don gets a letter in the mail from a woman (who does not sign the letter) and says that her son is Don's and that he is coming to visit Don, to see who his father really is. Don, shows the note to Winston, and Winston tells Don, to make a list of all the girls he has been with in the past. Don, makes a list of five people and Winston gets information on all of them including where they live and sets out a traveling course for Don, to go and see them to find out which one is the mother of his child. Don, goes on this journey and meets these women he has not seen in years to find out the truth about the letter and notices how much some of these women have changed since he last knew them. Broken Flowers, has good direction, a good script, good performances by the whole cast, good cinematography and good film editing. The film is written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, who has brought us such offbeat delights as Down By Law, Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai and Coffee And Cigarettes, and all of those I liked a lot. But, I was disappointed with Broken Flowers. It was not a bad film in any way but it is slow and it often tries to make witty and smart jokes and be funny but for the most part the jokes don't work and they are not funny. The film also lacks energy and it doesn't have as interesting characters or situations as past Jarmusch films who shows he can whip up some really good conversations like in Coffee And Cigarettes. I didn't really find any of the characters that interesting and at times it was hard to relate to characters in the film and wonder at the end what the point of the movie was. It was still mildly entertaining and I liked their performances and some of the creative scenes so for that I'am slightly recommending this but it doesn't work on a whole as well as past Jarmusch movies that were virtually ignored while this one is getting a lot of buzz.