From Boyz N The Hood to 2 Fast 2 Furious, the career of John Singleton proves two things. One, the man cannot spell. Two, as a director, he’s much more interesting when developing character-driven drama than he is when given the keys to a soulless Hollywood actioner.Fortunately, Four Brothers plays to his strengths. There’s a car chase — and it’s ten times better than 2 Fast’s oily pile-ups — but the focus is squarely on the dynamic between the unruly central quartet. Whether it’s Mark Wahlberg teasing Garrett Hedlund’s runt-of-the-litter, or all four of them piling into the bathroom like kids, the small moments ring true. This keeps the energy levels high – when it strips down into a revenge thriller, the bickering foursome makes a refreshing change from the dour lone vigilante that usually stalks these kind of films. But Singleton’s picked up a few bad habits from his times paddling in the blockbuster shallows. The villain — Detroit gangster Victor Sweet (Chiwitel Eijifor) — is so cartoonishly diabolical that all he’s missing is a cat and a secret underground lair. Such lack of sophistication isn’t disastrous, and Singleton’s ambition within the hackneyed revenge thriller genre is intriguing, with Four Brothers coming off as a kind of chilly urban Western.
Four Brothers Review
Four foster brothers return to their childhood home in Detroit when the elderly woman who saved them from the streets is murdered in a botched robbery. As they get to know each other again, they begin to suspect theres been a cover-up and set out to wrea
Release Date:
30 Sep 2005
Running Time:
109 minutes
Certificate:
15
Original Title:
Four Brothers
Heavy-handed in places and bad news for the Detroit Tourist Commission, this is still a slick, fun ensemble piece and a step back in the right direction for Singleton.
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