Bottle Rocket

This first collaborative effort by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, Bottle Rocket, is a kind of road, outlaw, comic romance with modern day Don Quixote, Dignan (Owen Wilson), in the lead. Never has the romantic spirit, that very best quality of America, though it cause them ever so much trouble (think Jack Kerouac, Jesse James, John Muir) been so crystalised in a film and in a character. Throughout the film Wilson delivers some of the most beautiful, touching and hilarious lines you’ll ever hear – you can’t quote them, they need Wilson’s note perfect delivery, but after seeing Bottle Rocket you’ll know why people call out ‘Ka kaw ka kaw’ in public (and in other films) and think it’s tremendously funny. I can't watch those films where multiple casinos, banks, governments are knocked off by teams of supernaturally gifted experts - more fantastical and far more unrelatable than unicorns; there are just two heists in this film: a successful one of a book shop after hours and a disasterous one of a chemical plant. Bottle Rocket has cult status these days, and it deserves it.