Four Brothers

[Lando 2019]

I watched this movie last week and I can't help but think it would be a good movie for HDTGM. At first glance it may seem like a forgettable action flick, but after watching it I think it would be a good one for them to watch for several reasons.

First off this film is never quite sure what it wants to be, at different times it's a light action comedy, a dark crime drama and a quasi-blaxploitation film, but never does any of them well.

In the comedy moments the jokes aren't funny and are often homophobic jabs at one particular character who the writers seemed to dislike. Throughout the whole movie one of the brothers, Jack, who is the sensitive rock 'n' roll character is mercilessly taunted (mostly by Wahlberg) and called gay and rarely does anything other than sigh and pout at the jokes. At one point it is established that he isn't gay because he says "Jack doesn't like dick and balls, Jack likes boobs," but the taunting is so merciless that I had to go look online to figure out if he was supposed to be gay or not. In fact, even as the character bleeds out from a gunshot Wahlberg calls him homophobic slurs! This guy goes to his grave being called gay.

The dark crime element undermines the likeability of the characters. Many times while trying to investigate who killed their adopted mother, the four brothers don't hesitate to brutally torture people in order to extract information. The end result is feeling more sympathy for the person who was injured than the brothers who are trying to figure it all out.

The blaxploitation is particularly odd. Given that 5 years prior to Four Brothers John Singleton remade Shaft, I gather that he loved blaxploitation films of the 70s (Four Brothers is a much better movie than Shaft, which I thought was pretty bad). But it seems like he wanted to remove the "-xploitation" from the formula and turn it into a positive genre for African Americans. However, the end result ends up being a lot like what "Christian Rock" is to "Rock."

That's only the confused state of the movie, there is a lot for them to pick apart and they've already done one Singleton movie (Abduction), so I think this one would make a good followup.

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In fact, even as the character bleeds out from a gunshot Wahlberg calls him homophobic slurs! This guy goes to his grave being called gay.

 

Way to go Marky Mark! This movie so boring to me. The only character I liked was Tyrese, and even though I like Andre3K, he's not the best actor in any stretch. He did ok, and I think he played to his real life personality. Way better movie debut than mumbling Nas had in Belly.