August 12, 2005

I reviewed John Singleton’s FOUR BROTHERS twenty years ago and hopefully I’ll have a few new things to say about it, but the sad truth is my verdict has not changed. This is a movie that starts off with a real good hook and then doesn’t do enough with it. It’s thoroughly okay.

The screenplay is by David Elliot (THE WATCHER) & Paul Lovett, the team who later did G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, and the hook is that an old lady named Evelyn Mercer (Fionnula Flanagan, THE EWOK ADVENTURE) is in a convenience store in Highland Park, Michigan when it gets robbed, and ends up shot to death. It turns out she was a beloved member of the community who helped hundreds of troubled kids find foster homes. But there were four kids so bad nobody would take them, and she adopted them herself. So her funeral brings all four brothers back home, they get to talking, and decide to go find out who did this. 

Sort of the leader of the group is Bobby (Mark Wahlberg following I HEART HUCKABEES), a real hot head and primary instigator of the being-up-to-no-good. The others, as I noted in my original review, don’t really show signs of being bad kids. Angel (Tyrese Gibson, who Singleton had directed in BABY BOY and 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS) is the Luke Duke of the movie, his troublemaking is just that he steals a neighbor’s girlfriend, Sofi, who comes to live with them and they racistly call her “Mi Vida Loca.” (I guess good for Bobby being familiar with the works of Allison Anders. I wouldn’t have called that.) But at least it’s a much bigger role for Sofía Vergara than what she had in LORDS OF DOGTOWN earlier in the summer, and she’s good in it.

Jeremiah (André Benjamin, HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE) is the responsible one who stuck around and took care of their mom, is known as an upstanding citizen, so fresh and so clean clean. Jack (Garrett Hedlund in only his third movie, two years before DEATH SENTENCE and five years before TRON: LEGACY) is the little brother who’s in a band, he has spiky hair and a leather jacket and seems okay being a pretty boy, doesn’t try too hard to be tough, though he doesn’t like how much Bobby picks on him.

There’s an interesting scene where Bobby is overwhelmed by being in his mother’s room and starts to cry, so he goes and hides in the bathroom while “I Wish It Would Rain” by The Temptations plays, with the lyrics “But everyone knows that a man ain’t supposed to cry.” He rinses his face, then goes into Jack’s room, accuses him of crying and calls him a fairy. Throughout the whole movie he targets Jack specifically with homophobic taunts – I wasn’t sure at first if he was actually supposed to be gay or if that was just Bobby’s favorite joke (it turns out to be the latter). Weirdly Bobby’s vulnerable side isn’t really explored any further, his toxic masculinity doesn’t really have an arc to it. But now that I think about it it’s pretty Singleton to throw in a little contradictory thing to make you think about a topic he doesn’t really intend to go into detail about.

By the way, I noticed they keep saying their mom got shot in a liquor store, but we saw it happen, it was a convenience store. Somebody call 911 or whatever the number is for Cinemasins. It’s a pretty straight forward mystery investigation, the boys following from lead to lead, terrorizing local criminals who might know something about what happened. They raid places pretending to be cops and basically they just act like cops, yelling and pushing, threatening to shoot, also threatening to light on fire. In fact, the actual cop Lieutenant Green (Terrence Howard), who they knew growing up and are on a man-hug-at-the-funeral basis with, doesn’t seem as bad as them.

I’m a little confused about the timeline because I really thought I saw the Singleton-produced HUSTLE & FLOW in the theater, but if so it must’ve come to Seattle late or something because I definitely didn’t see it before this movie or it would’ve seemed notable that Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson are both in it. (Henson plays Jeremiah’s wife.) Usually when an acclaimed director only produces and doesn’t direct it’s not gonna be as good as his real shit, but I think we all agree HUSTLE & FLOW is way better than this.

There are corrupt cops involved and a pretty clever (if far-fetched) method of comeuppance, but the scariest villain is a gangster named Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who will do SERENITY, INSIDE MAN, CHILDREN OF MEN, AMERICAN GANGSTER and REDBELT all in the next three years). He does seem kinda like a Blaxploitation villain with that name and his fur coat and cane. He likes to dump bodies under the ice of a frozen lake, and owns a restaurant where everybody from criminals to politicians are terrified of him and kiss his ass. He pulls an A BETTER TOMORROW 2 move by making a guy eat food off the floor, and humiliates a councilman (Barry Shabaka Henley, FEAR OF A BLACK HAT) by making him sit at the kids’ table for Thanksgiving dinner.

I remember at the time people praising the soundtrack and yeah, it’s mostly Motown songs to honor the setting so it’s good stuff – The Four Tops, The Undisputed Truth, The Miracles. But it still bothers me that they use three of Marvin Gaye’s songs from TROUBLE MAN, including on the opening and closing credits, as if they’re the theme. Great songs, but from another movie I’ve already seen and have the soundtrack for. I was right in 2005 – we needed new soundtrack music. Maybe if Singleton kept his early composer Stanley Clarke then there could’ve been some soul in the score, but by this point he was always using David Arnold (INDEPENDENCE DAY).

Arnold also did SHAFT (2000), which at least incorporated wah-wahs. Singleton was clearly referencing more Blaxploitation tropes here, but oddly he gave the lead and most of the hero shots to Wahlberg. He’s the one who struts in and has a boxing match against Sweet at the end. Maybe it was to subvert stereotypes, I don’t know.

This is a decent looking, competently made movie, but it’s neither as virtuosic or as weird as Singleton’s earlier work. I rewatched POETIC JUSTICE recently and I forgot how cinematic that thing was – some really great shots and staging that seem above and beyond for the type of movie it is. This is more kinda what you’d expect for a movie like this. The one strange touch I guess is that the brothers sometimes imagine Evelyn standing there smiling at them. Sorta like the way Michael Meyers imagines his mom (and his childhood self, and a white horse) in Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN II.

Oh yeah, one other oddball touch. I mentioned in my original review that it was funny when they chased a guy and he had a bunch of rope in his apartment to rappel out the window with. For some reason I did not mention that they find a hatchet and chop the rope and make him fall. I mean that is some crazy shit, but nobody acts like it’s anything unusual. If that’s just the kind of stuff the four brothers are always coming across I wish there was more of it in this movie.