Four Brothers
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Rated: R
Website: http://www.fourbrothersmovie.com/home.html
Release Date: 2005-08-12
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, André Benjamin, Tyrese Gibson, Garrett Hedlund, SofÃa Vergara
Director: John Singleton
Screenwriter: David Elliot, Paul Lovett
Music Score: David Arnold
WorkNameSort: Four Brothers
Our Rating: 3.00
John Singleton directed this urban vigilante drama, in which four adoptees (two black, two white) seek vengeance after their mother is slain in a Detroit convenience store. It’s scant surprise that the flick is hyperviolent, sexist, profane and amoral: Our pissed-off heroes are as predisposed to cold-blooded murder as anybody involved in their mama’s offing. Yet the movie is also an undeniably entertaining watch, an unapologetically crass guy’s picture that moves fast and boasts some sassy, testosterone-laden performances. (Andre Benjamin of OutKast impresses as a sibling whose absence from most of the initial action may or may not be as suspicious as it looks). Keeping the film from tedium is an escalating disregard for the basic laws of cause and effect that makes the plot’s contrivances admirably impossible to predict. Searching for leads in a filled gymnasium, another of the four brothers (Mark Wahlberg) punches out a basketball player and waves a pistol around in a cheap attempt at intimidation. Nobody cowers, runs for the exits or calls the cops, and the incident is never spoken of again. Faced with such surreality, there’s nothing to do but give yourself over to Singleton’s portrayal of Detroit as a theme park of anarchy and ponder what morsel of fun idiocy the filmmaker is going to throw at us next. It’s like Anything Can Happen Day on The Mickey Mouse Club, but with a higher body count.
This article appears in Aug 10-16, 2005.