The career of director John Singleton can be interpreted any number of ways. Beginning as a protégée of Spike Lee and delivering the well-received indie hit “Boyz n the Hood", Singleton eventually went on to give us the revved-up studio sequel “2 Fast 2 Furious" in 2003. Whether Singleton is perceived as a sellout or as merely climbing the ideal career ladder, it is evident that he has not yet lost his edge. His latest film, the gritty revenge actioner “Four Brothers" proves the director's trademark touch to be very much intact, even as it perhaps also reveals him to be at a creative crossroads.
Assembled with charisma and heart, one couldn't ask for a more sure-handedly directed revenge film than this (outside of the “Kill Bill" series). From the very beginning, even as the penetrating strains of Jefferson Airplane's “Somebody to Love" is heard over the Paramount logo, it is clear that we are in the hands of a very deliberate and skilled filmmaker. At his best, Singleton's Motown-heavy music selections (appropriate since this film is set in Detroit,) punctuate his scenes in that most cinematic of ways that one often associates with Scorsese or Tarantino. The casting of the film, from steely-eyed Mark Wahlberg as the macho lead to “Hustle & Flow's" Terrence Howard in a supporting role as a good cop, is spot-on. The action, particularly a big neighborhood house-based shootout, is almost always solid. Clearly, there's a lot that is good about “Four Brothers". This is why it is all the more perplexing that the film ultimately settles as a formulaic blood-drenched revenge movie, completely devoid of the true harrowing resonance Singleton's early work was known for.
With the superior “Hustle & Flow" (one the year's best films to date) under his belt as producer, and “Four Brothers" hitting the screen a month later, it's logical that Singleton would currently be perceived as getting back to his urban roots. And while that may be true to some degree, this is no “Higher Learning" or even “Baby Boy". Cited as an inner-city remake of the 1965 western “The Sons of Katie Elder", “Four Brothers" is not much more than a standard by-the-numbers revenge flick, sadly lacking any moral conviction that it has every right to have. It all starts when a sweet-but-no-nonsense older lady is gunned down by masked thugs during a convenience store robbery. This lady was the saintly foster mother of scores of parentless “lost cause" youths living on the streets of Detroit, and when the rowdiest four of them all (played mostly by actors hailing from the music biz: Wahlberg, Andre Benjamin, Tyrese Gibson, and Garrett Hedlund) return home for her funeral, they reunite to find out who killed her, and avenge her death. As they dig deeper, and the body count rises higher, it becomes evident that there may be more to her murder than meets the eye.
It is the dueling nature of the way these guys were raised by their loving mother (to forgive others and abhor violence) versus the brutal actions they take against her killers that leaves one uneasy, and that strongest of cinematic aftertastes is clearly one that was not intentional of John Singleton. A reconciliation of these polarities, or even obvious inner struggles on the part of the foster brothers would've gone a long way to make this film a more worthwhile venture. As it stands now, it is the story of four guys who absently disregard their dead mother's values in favor of avenging her death by any means necessary. That they happen to clean up a lot of the town's riff-raff is simply an added bonus.
As I alluded to before, the acting in the film is all above the mark. Wahlberg pulls off one isolated, teary-eyed scene, and spends the rest of the film effectively in unhinged action hero mode, complete with an unmistakably cool tough-guy entrance to the final skirmish. Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 of OutKast) is off to a promising acting career, and Tyrese Gibson and Garrett Hedlund are good as well. All four have clunky beyond-the-grave exchanges with their dead mother, but these scenes are a script problem, as the moments come off as cheesy and forced in their very existence.
“Four Brothers" could be the most brutal film I've seen this year. Unfortunately, despite the obvious talent involved, the movie never rises from the depths of mainstream crowd-pleasing revenge action. Don't be fooled by any hype implying that this is a raw and gritty indie film born of personal vision and artistic merit ala Singleton's earlier work. It's an achingly bloody, violent movie (albeit a well-made one) that works to some degree on that level, but disappoints in that it could've been so much more. Hopefully Singleton settles on one side of the commercial filmmaking fence soon, and can avoid future so-so projects like this one.
Jim Tudor