Four Brothers: Movie Review
As the self-proclaimed geek that I am, I plant myself daily to a great website called Ain’t It Cool News. This is where I learn about the obvious cool upcoming things, like movies, television shows, comic books and other geek related projects. So when preliminary screening reviews of Four Brothers came in, after reading them - I had been hesitant to watch it. So today I went to go see it with a friend of mine and I have to admit. I was thoroughly entertained.
Without going into too much plot detail, at least not in this part of the review, the movie starts off with a robbery and a senseless killing of a store clerk and a woman in a Detroit store on Thanksgiving Eve. As it turns out this woman had four adopted sons, who all come back to bury their mom. The brothers are angry that something like this happened to their mother, who in their eyes gave 4 troublesome kids love, a home, and futures. Needless to say, they want revenge. The police investigation wasn’t enough for the brothers, because they believe that a different type of justice needs to be dispensed. The Brothers (Bobby, Jeremiah, Jack and Angel) set out to find their mother’s killers. This is all pretty much in the first 15 minutes of the movie. As the story progresses, and the Brothers unearth more clues to their mother’s killer, we find out there’s more to the story than just a random killing. We find out that their mother was actually executed and that it was all a set-up but why. The action was gritty. Great camera work. The choice of brothers was definitely a believable mix of personalities. They acted and behaved like brothers would. I liked this movie. A lot actually. However…
***Spoilers Ahead***
While I really think that the plot for the movie is definitely original, given the crap that’s been coming out of Hollywood in recent years, this is just a good old-fashioned revenge story. The concept is not original, but it’s the simplicity that makes this movie work. These four guys just want to know why someone would want to kill their saint-of-a mother. This emotion fuels the entire movie, but looses track somewhere. The Brothers in their quest become dangerously reckless and not necessarily understanding the doors they’re opening good or bad. They don’t think at all, until about half way into the movie. It wasn’t until when we find out that dear old mom’s death wasn’t accidental, we get into a weird conspiracy involving crooked cops, the obligatory crime boss who’s running half of Detroit, and the cover up of her death. Here’s my problem with that. The mother doesn’t really get enough screen time for us to make a connection with her. It starts off with her giving a lesson to a young thief about the error of stealing. Then she’s killed. We feel sorry that she died, but we already felt that way when buying the ticket. I doubt she was going to be an asshole or a bad mother. Then we wouldn’t have a movie. What we needed to see was why this woman was so important to her sons and the neighborhood. Was she well known? Yes she was and she apparently has been a woman who was a gem to the foster care system. Placing children everywhere, except for the four fucks up who couldn’t get a decent home. That’s all we know of her. Nothing else.
Then there’s the fact that we never really find out why this woman was killed. Did one of the brothers do something against the crime boss? Did one of the brothers do something so heinous, that killing someone close to them was necessary? Nope and nope. It wasn’t tragic, it was plain senseless and not relevant to the story at first. They started going in that direction, which made the story interesting, but then it all of a sudden becomes a “wrong place, wrong time” scenario. Then it goes back to her murder being linked to one of the brother’s business deals, but then it still didn’t make sense.
They kind of went into this entire situation blindly and then go “Wow. There’s crooked cops? And a crooked congressman? Oh and a crime boss too? What the hell did we get ourselves into?” They find out the underlying current of corruption there and that their mother perhaps found out something she wasn’t supposed to. One thing’s for sure this was not a character driven story here. We really don’t get a sense of who these brothers were before. Just brief mentions. (Actually we don’t see who they actually are until the end credits, where we see their lives before their mother’s death.) We do know that once their mother dies, they go all vigilante-mode on the neighborhood thugs to gather information. There’s no guilt involved which I thought would have been a good character development. There’s no redemptive spark for a third of the brothers not being there only until her funeral. I think the only one you really get a good sense of is Jeremiah (André Benjamin). He’d never left his mom and took care of her and raised a family. He tried not to get involved, but played on the middle of the fence a lot, because it was his brothers. He had a lot to loose in this; not only his brothers, but also his wife and children were all at stake here. He was the smart one of the group and it showed through a few times.
It was because of this lack of character development, that I saw the death of the youngest brother, Jack, a mile away. In all of their efforts to find out who killed their mother and all their reckless behavior, they never once realized that they are now targets. Protection of themselves and the rest of their family should have been priority, so when Jack was killed in an attack on the Brothers, it brought tears to your eyes, because he was the youngest and the most inexperienced violence wise, but likewise predictable, because he wasn’t a fighter and we knew it. So when he was lured outside of their house by a rogue snowball – I was like here it comes - he’s about to die. You knew it was coming. Retaliation from the bad guys was imminent.
Other than that, it was a solid movie. The action was decent and there were some definite high tension moments. I definitely recommend it to see or to own when it comes out on DVD.
Without going into too much plot detail, at least not in this part of the review, the movie starts off with a robbery and a senseless killing of a store clerk and a woman in a Detroit store on Thanksgiving Eve. As it turns out this woman had four adopted sons, who all come back to bury their mom. The brothers are angry that something like this happened to their mother, who in their eyes gave 4 troublesome kids love, a home, and futures. Needless to say, they want revenge. The police investigation wasn’t enough for the brothers, because they believe that a different type of justice needs to be dispensed. The Brothers (Bobby, Jeremiah, Jack and Angel) set out to find their mother’s killers. This is all pretty much in the first 15 minutes of the movie. As the story progresses, and the Brothers unearth more clues to their mother’s killer, we find out there’s more to the story than just a random killing. We find out that their mother was actually executed and that it was all a set-up but why. The action was gritty. Great camera work. The choice of brothers was definitely a believable mix of personalities. They acted and behaved like brothers would. I liked this movie. A lot actually. However…
***Spoilers Ahead***
While I really think that the plot for the movie is definitely original, given the crap that’s been coming out of Hollywood in recent years, this is just a good old-fashioned revenge story. The concept is not original, but it’s the simplicity that makes this movie work. These four guys just want to know why someone would want to kill their saint-of-a mother. This emotion fuels the entire movie, but looses track somewhere. The Brothers in their quest become dangerously reckless and not necessarily understanding the doors they’re opening good or bad. They don’t think at all, until about half way into the movie. It wasn’t until when we find out that dear old mom’s death wasn’t accidental, we get into a weird conspiracy involving crooked cops, the obligatory crime boss who’s running half of Detroit, and the cover up of her death. Here’s my problem with that. The mother doesn’t really get enough screen time for us to make a connection with her. It starts off with her giving a lesson to a young thief about the error of stealing. Then she’s killed. We feel sorry that she died, but we already felt that way when buying the ticket. I doubt she was going to be an asshole or a bad mother. Then we wouldn’t have a movie. What we needed to see was why this woman was so important to her sons and the neighborhood. Was she well known? Yes she was and she apparently has been a woman who was a gem to the foster care system. Placing children everywhere, except for the four fucks up who couldn’t get a decent home. That’s all we know of her. Nothing else.
Then there’s the fact that we never really find out why this woman was killed. Did one of the brothers do something against the crime boss? Did one of the brothers do something so heinous, that killing someone close to them was necessary? Nope and nope. It wasn’t tragic, it was plain senseless and not relevant to the story at first. They started going in that direction, which made the story interesting, but then it all of a sudden becomes a “wrong place, wrong time” scenario. Then it goes back to her murder being linked to one of the brother’s business deals, but then it still didn’t make sense.
They kind of went into this entire situation blindly and then go “Wow. There’s crooked cops? And a crooked congressman? Oh and a crime boss too? What the hell did we get ourselves into?” They find out the underlying current of corruption there and that their mother perhaps found out something she wasn’t supposed to. One thing’s for sure this was not a character driven story here. We really don’t get a sense of who these brothers were before. Just brief mentions. (Actually we don’t see who they actually are until the end credits, where we see their lives before their mother’s death.) We do know that once their mother dies, they go all vigilante-mode on the neighborhood thugs to gather information. There’s no guilt involved which I thought would have been a good character development. There’s no redemptive spark for a third of the brothers not being there only until her funeral. I think the only one you really get a good sense of is Jeremiah (André Benjamin). He’d never left his mom and took care of her and raised a family. He tried not to get involved, but played on the middle of the fence a lot, because it was his brothers. He had a lot to loose in this; not only his brothers, but also his wife and children were all at stake here. He was the smart one of the group and it showed through a few times.
It was because of this lack of character development, that I saw the death of the youngest brother, Jack, a mile away. In all of their efforts to find out who killed their mother and all their reckless behavior, they never once realized that they are now targets. Protection of themselves and the rest of their family should have been priority, so when Jack was killed in an attack on the Brothers, it brought tears to your eyes, because he was the youngest and the most inexperienced violence wise, but likewise predictable, because he wasn’t a fighter and we knew it. So when he was lured outside of their house by a rogue snowball – I was like here it comes - he’s about to die. You knew it was coming. Retaliation from the bad guys was imminent.
Other than that, it was a solid movie. The action was decent and there were some definite high tension moments. I definitely recommend it to see or to own when it comes out on DVD.
posted by Dre @ 8:30 AM
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