|
Bad boyz, Bad
boyz . . . Watcha gonna do? Reviewed by Graham H.
Moes Director John Singleton was just 24 when he earned an Academy Award nomination in 1991 for Boyz N the Hood, beating Orson Welles by two years for the distinction of youngest ever to earn a best director nod. He's "acclaimed director" John Singleton now in studio press releases, of course, despite the fact things haven't been so good in the 'hood since then. (Shaft, 2 Fast, 2 Furious). But with his latest near-miss, the revenge-driven urban actioner Four Brothers, the designation is feeling more and more like a stretch. The story is nicely summed up by its clever tagline. (They came home to bury mom ...and her killer.) The problem is...it can be nicely summed up in a clever tagline. Brothers follows four ex-delinquent siblings (two black, two white) on a rampage through the urban jungle of Detroit in pursuit of the killers who murdered their adoptive mother, a kindly old woman who saved them all from the streets. It's part western, part detective drama, part gangster (make that gangsta) flick. But if that brand of genre fusion sounds promising — and it is — it's disappointing in the execution. As a western, it's the inherently unsatisfying anti-hero variety. As a detective drama, the clues come too easy. And as a gangster movie, the villain arrives too late, too cliched and too contrived for us to get onboard with his downfall. What's left is a vulgar, lazy and repetitive plot of "find the villain, kill the villain" on up the criminal pecking order to the top. At the top, thankfully, there are a few twists that make things interesting again, but they come 2 fast, 2 furious to process logically. Worse, it's a vigilante story that makes no distinction between justice and revenge. According to screenwriting guru Robert McKee, every good film progresses to an "obligatory scene" — that scene the filmmakers are obligated to deliver given the set-up they've established. "What unites the brothers is the code instilled in them by their mother," Singleton has said. That code, we assume, is the moral grounding they wouldn't have received on the streets. The obligatory scene, we assume, will have our vigilante heroes exact justice, but on a level that validates them as better than the thugs they're fighting — thugs they might themselves have become without her. It's set up in several scenes, particularly one in which the brothers hold hands in a heartfelt prayer before a meal. Yet the story unfolds without a moral arc of any sort. No internal conflicts, no pricks of conscience, no obligatory scene of triumph as the "better men" mom raised them to be. The movie works, but only as a pure-revenge, "death wish" tale of bad guys vs. badder guys. Sure, it's satisfying to see mom avenged, but she's cast as something of a failure in the process. What the film does have going for it is energy and authenticity in the brothers' relationship. Crass and ghetto as it is, their trash talk rapport has the ring of truth. We believe these guys have a family bond, something crucial to buying the story on any level. Mark Wahlberg, in reality one of nine siblings from a poor urban upbringing, seems at ease as the rough-and-tumble leader Bobby. As does "OutKast" Andre Benjamin, playing the successful, wiser member of the group. Toned down as he is, the flamboyant Benjamin has a warm, ingratiating quality that suggests a bigger future in film than in music. And though repetitive, Singleton's action scenes have kick. There's a road chase through blizzard conditions that plays out like a fist fight between cars, and a mass shootout three-quarters of the way through the film that may be the single most satisfying and soundly-constructed action scene this year. There's also something fun about Singleton's retro-70's, vaguely blacksploitation take on material that also finds room for pick-up hockey games and ice fishing (sort of). Would that he had taken the time to build such elements and potentially rich characters into something more than a one-note tale of hoods in the hood. |
||
