Four Brothers - Austin American-Statesman movie review

It ain't heavy, it's 'Four Brothers'

By JOHN DeFORE
Austin American-Statesman

John Singleton dips into the blaxploitation well again this summer — he produced the current pimp-rap flick "Hustle & Flow" — with "Four Brothers."

Like "Hustle," "Brothers" conforms to the old blaxploitation guideline that, no matter how many black characters are living out transgressive fantasies onscreen, a strong white man is probably reaping the benefits somewhere — most often behind the scenes, such as "Hustle" filmmaker Craig Brewer, or Jack Hill, director of "Foxy Brown" and "Coffy."

Paramount Pictures

'Four Brothers'

3 out of 5 stars

Director: John Singleton
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Andre Benjamin, Tyrese Gibson, Garrett Hedlund, Sofia Vergara
Release date: August 12, 2005
Rating: R for strong violence, pervasive language and some sexual content.
See showtimes

On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

This time around, Mark Wahlberg is the man, which means getting the movie's most iconic shots — he enters the film driving through Detroit to Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man" — and its most hard-boiled bits of dialogue, almost all of which are too embarrassing to repeat here.

Sprinkled around in supporting roles, though, are some of the most charismatic young black men in movies today: Terrence Howard, the pimp in "Hustle" who here is a good-guy cop; OutKast's Andre Benjamin, possibly the most beautiful man in hip-hop; and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who wowed critics in "Dirty Pretty Things" and here shows just how far his remarkably powerful voice can go in transforming a generic villain into someone worth watching.

It's a bitterly argued question whether the crowd-pleasing "Hustle & Flow" should in fact make audiences feel morally icky. But the pleasures offered in "Four Brothers" are really only guilty ones in an aesthetic sense: Yes, this vigilante joyride relishes all sorts of mayhem, but it never even pretends to have anything to do with the real world. In terms of pure storytelling, on the other hand, it's a tale in which every thrill is matched by at least two moments of improbably blunt stupidity.

"Brothers," after all, is ostensibly a film in which four hard-case foster children return home to find out who killed their kindly old "mom" — but where the self-styled detectives have a habit of killing people before they can get any information from them. The poster's tough-guy tagline may read, "They came home to bury mom ... and her killer," but the boys kill or fumble so many leads to the murderer that it gets fun to guess how badly astray they can go before the film leads them to their man.

Meanwhile, though, Singleton offers some good, trashy kicks for viewers willing to check their IQs at the door. If Wahlberg's more growling dialogue fizzles, the playfully abusive banter he shares with his co-stars is enjoyable. All the characters' dumb moves may grate, but they set up an environment that doubles the pleasure of otherwise predictable plot twists. And, of course, there's plenty of running, driving and shooting to keep everyone busy — including an all-out firefight in which the leads get to rescue each other in turn.

This is not the film in which Benjamin gets to show audiences whether there's any real acting ability behind his magnetic screen presence, or the one where Singleton will recover the respect he earned with "Boyz N The Hood." And by playing relatively minor bad-guy roles back-to-back (here and in the upcoming "Serenity") Ejiofor might not be doing much good for his upwardly mobile career. But "Four Brothers" is almost sure to make a pile of cash, which is a fine thing if it gets these men more work — hopefully in films that aim a bit higher than this mindlessly entertaining shoot-em-up.