When his latest girlfriend leaves him, retired computer magnate Don Johnston has no greater ambition than to sit around the house. But then he receives an anonymous letter from a former lover informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him...
There's a real poignancy in watching Murray's emotional chill thaw from the heat generated by even the idea of romance, or at least its more libidinous evil twin, lust.
Murray manages, almost impossibly, to come up with still another rich variation on his Depleted Man persona, and his performance is at once enormously generous and fiercely, concisely witty.
Many will relish Broken Flowers' refusal to serve up a resolution; others will find it frustrating. Inevitably, that's Jarmusch: like Murray's character journey, the rewards lie in the small moments that fade as much as the ones that linger.
Geoff Andrew
Time Out
August 16, 2007
The ending is sublime, a set piece that almost makes up for the overwhelming slightness of it all.
