Bottle Rocket

Less idiosyncratic than Rushmore, Anderson's debut is none the less offbeat enough to defy easy analysis. Three friends, already old enough to have started growing apart, team up to indulge the flakey Dignan (Owen Wilson) in his fantasy of pulling off a major heist. The other two are Anthony (Luke Wilson), just recovering from a breakdown, and the interestingly named Bob Mapplethorpe (Musgrave), a rich kid desperate to escape from domination by his macho brother. The plot throws several curveballs (such as Anthony falling charmingly in love with a Latina motel worker), but the core of the film is the strength/fragility of the central friendships, bounded by motifs of sanity and craziness, imprisonment and escape. Caan does a funny cameo as the local crimelord but the film belongs to Anderson's co-conspirator Wilson, whose wired performance leaps off the screen.