Brothers Alan and Gabe Polsky have established themselves in the last five years as indie LA producers with a line in literary projects: they reportedly own the rights to biographies of Freud and Einstein, and brought Werner Herzog's remake of Bad Lieutenant to the screen. One of their properties was a 2006 novel by the country singer Willy Vlautin, The Motel Life, about two hobo brothers on the run. James Franco was once said to be attached to direct, but the Polskys evidently decided to get the job done themselves and made their own joint directing debut with this 2012 film. Stephen Dorff and Emile Hirsch play brothers in Reno, Nevada, who are bonded by a tough childhood and have no one in their lives but each other. They do odd jobs, they drink, they live in grim motel rooms. One is a great storyteller, the other is a talented artist: together they might make something of their lives, but seem doomed to booze it all away. Then a terrible thing happens; they have to get out of town, and yet their lives are so directionless it hardly makes much difference to their mutual, gloomy state of mind. The film is heavy-going, unformed and self-indulgent, with characters who are neither sympathetic nor (crucially) interesting.