FOUR BROTHERS Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Paramount Pictures
Grade:C
Directed by: John Singleton
Written by: David Elliot, Paul Lovett
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin, Garret
Hedlund, Terrence Howard, Josh Charles, Chiwetel Ejofor
Screened at: Loews 34th St., NYC, 8/13/05 If you’re baffled by the conclusion of Iain Softley’s “The Skeleton Key,” you might think and think for a while and you’ll figure things out. You may spend more time tackling the cryptic features of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” but after you’ve seen it a second time you’ll realize that it’s the best film of 2001. “Four Brothers” should be easier to parse; after all, it’s a summer revenge pic, a pretty commercial choice. While the brutality is refreshing, the plot is so convoluted you might just give up, given the unsatisfactory way that John Singleton puts the pieces of David Elliot and Paul Lovett’s screenplay together. You’ll wonder about plot holes, such as this: when a bad guy is being chased by the titled four brothers right up to the door of his apartment house, he throws a rope down to the sidewalk and begins his climb, only to be cut down midway, falling kerplop to the sidewalk. If the brothers know where he lives, wouldn’t the villain’s escape be a most temporary salvation–unless he has the money to move out of the hell-hole that Singleton makes out of Detroit? So mixed up are the plot elements that you’d not be blamed for thinking that Singleton’s principal aim is to poke fun at the 1970's blaxploitation pictures, with elements of Dodge City thrown in for good measure. Just minutes into the movie, the saintly, white-haired Evelyn Mercer (Fionnula Flanagan) is shot to death in her convenience by masked bandits who, as the security tape indicates, already had the money they were allegedly seeking and had no reason to commit further mayhem. Four young men from foster homes whom she had adopted because no one else wanted them consider themselves brothers and are determined to avenge the murder. They are: Bobby (Mark Wahlberg), just out of jail and eager to pull triggers; Angel (Tyrese Gibson), late of the Marine Corps; Jeremiah (Andre Benjamin), who should be the most stable as he’s married with children; and Jack (Garrett Hedlund), whose underwritten role targets him as just another white guy to balance the quartet as two blacks and two whites. Notwithstanding the concerned presence of Detroit’s good cop, Lieutenant Green (Terrence Howard), the brothers vow over a Thanksgiving turkey (which they enjoy because “mom” would want them to have it) to off all the people responsible for the seemingly senseless killing. That means gunning down not only the petty hoodlums, but going after the big gun himself, Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is so fearless that even when he knows he’s going down, he doesn’t beg for his life but instead challenges the brothers to a fight on the ice. In a similar movie from forty years back, Henry Hathaway’s “The Sons of Katie Elder,” John Wayne and Dean Martin play sleuths out of discover why frontier woman Katie Elder died broke. A fun film, “Katie Elder” is blessed with a coherent narrative. Singleton’s movie, by contrast, provides all the chaos, including a nifty car chase on icy Detroit roads and a group of bandits with automatic weapons who all but trash a rickety Detroit house, where is the soul? It’s all very well for adopted sons to go after a killer when the police are not sufficiently motivated to do the job and when one cop is as corrupt and arrogant as they come. But if a secret insurance policy that brings one of the brothers $400,000 on his “mom”’s demise is not at all the motive of the killing, then exactly what is? The story is as shaky and fragile as the wooden building that’s virtually destroyed by machine gun bullets. Rated R. 109 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
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