Review of Four Brothers (2005) by Markb. — 12 Sep 2005

Does anyone at Paramount Pictures have an original bone in his or her body anymore, or was having them all surgically removed a prerequisite for employment? Their entire roster of motion pictures over the last year seems to have consisted solely of remakes of past successes (Alfie, The Longest Yard, War of the Worlds, The Bad News Bears) that, to a one, served only to remind everybody of how terrific the originals were (.

..and maybe prompt people to purchase them on DVD? Hmmmmm! I guess I have to take it all back; great business strategy, guys!) At any rate, the hits just keep on getting regurgitated: the latest is John Singleton's present-day urban variation on the competent but forgettable 1965 John Wayne/ Dean Martin/ Earl Holliman/ Michael Anderson Jr.

western The Sons of Katie Elder, with Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin and Garrett Hedlund as one-time seriously troubled youths who are taken under the wing of a beneficient woman who sets them right--but not SO right that they're unable to exact a notably bloody, streetwise revenge on her killers.

(In an unintentionally funny piece of dialogue comparing the four antiheroes now to what they would've been had they not been rescued from a life of crime, it's explained that even though they still have plenty of rough edges, they're congressmen compared to what they once were.

Huh? In whose fantasy world is a congressman an example of angelic behavior?) The one improvement Singleton makes on the original is that he actually shows the mom--warmly played by Fionnula Flannigan--whereas in the original she had died before the film began and was represented onscreen by her rocking chair.

The problem is that Singleton doesn't show ENOUGH of her; the real story, I think, is in what this exceptional woman did to get her self-appointed charges on the right path. But then, I'm not sure that either Singleton knows himself or is all that interested; after she's murdered, the guys mostly drink, screw and stuff themselves with Thanksgiving dinner, and you'd think they'd lost a stray cat that had been hanging around rather than the number one influence on their lives.

The actors playing the foursome seem to frequently be acting in different movies; only on rare occasions do they give the impression of being brothers at all--real, adopted or whatever. Remember when a frequent (if often unjustified) criticism of Singleton's post-Boyz N The Hood work (Poetic Justice, Higher Learning, Baby Boy) was that he was trying too hard? Would that the good old days were back: the bulk of Singleton's recent work, from the smoothly-made remake of Shaft to the unashamedly trashy sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious to this, has been slickly made but increasingly lazy and machine-tooled, and this relentlessly routine urban bloodbath is the weakest of the lot.

It's all sensation, no resonance: the central message poignantly proclaimed at the end of the groundbreaking Boyz N the Hood was "Increase the Peace"; Singleton's philosophy in Four Brothers seems to have morphed into "Make the Blasts Last".