2.32:1 DVD capture: Four Brothers The DVD

Buy the FOUR BROTHERS poster at Moviegoods (click on image) FOUR BROTHERS Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada Paramount presents Four Brothers on DVD in a 2.32:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer.* Peter Menzies' cinematography is surprisingly flat but that's hardly the fault of the disc's authors, who are firing on all cylinders here. Likewise, the A/V geeks in charge honour a similarly perfunctory Dolby Digital 5.1 soundmix that at least gives good bullet-ricochet. (On another track, find director John Singleton contorting himself into a human pretzel to justify the picture's 'gun = fun' attitude in the shadow of his career-defining anti-violence tract Boyz N the Hood--when, that is, he's not spouting commentary clichés like "[X] was a real trooper.") Considering what they had to work with, production house Light Source & Imagery have cooked up a batch of making-of featurettes almost worth watching, starting with "The Look of Four Brothers" (10 mins.), in which Singleton and Menzies emphasize the film's already-belaboured debt to the western genre. What I want to know is why Singleton shuns comparisons of the film to John Ford's The Sons of Katie Elder in his yak-track if he did, in fact, set out to steep Four Brothers in the traditions Ford helped pioneer. Then again, up seems to mean left in Singleton's world: he refers to the film's snowy weather as a "surrogate character," which makes me wonder if he writes speeches for George W. Bush on the side. Production designer Keith Brian Burns emerges from both Four Brothers and this segment unscathed, however (his forced-perspective neighbourhood façade had me thoroughly convinced), while costume designer Ruth Carter defines the punk aesthetic brilliantly, especially for someone without, by her own admission, much foreknowledge of the milieu. "Crafting Four Brothers" (11 mins.) focuses mainly on the development of the screenplay and to that end interviews co-writers Paul and David at length. They, too, discuss the western influence (spaghetti western, that is) and reveal that the corresponding death of Paul's grandmother lent verisimilitude to the passages of mourning. I agree that certain details (an open novel, for instance) ring true, but the embarrassing Thanksgiving dinner sequence--for which our screenwriters pat themselves on the back--must have played better on the page. "Behind the Brotherhood" (9 mins.) delves into the core quartet of Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, André Benjamin, and Garrett Hedlund. No surprises here: Wahlberg was perceived as Big Bro both on- and off-camera; Singleton protégé Tyrese is a malapropism generator ("He don't have a conscience" is Gibson's attempt to compliment co-star Hedlund on his lack of self-consciousness); Benjamin wants to be taken seriously as an actor; and Hedlund is whiter than Barry Manilow. Last but not least, "Mercer House Shootout" (4 mins.) reviews the titular set-piece, which special effects supervisor Neil Trifnovich laments was originally too elaborate for the time and money they had, though no one will say exactly how it was compromised. Nine deleted scenes, none of them noteworthy (just more gay panic), round out the special features, Four Brothers' trailer plus previews of The Latham Comedy Collection, The Honeymooners, The Bad News Bears, Hustle & Flow, The Weather Man, and Elizabethtown the platter proper.-Bill Chambers *Also available in fullscreen.

The Film
excerpted from a longer review found here

John Singleton's Four Brothers is a ludicrous throwback to the bootstrap operas of the blaxploitation era armed with a lot of hip-hop misanthropy and a gimmick that brings together two white guys (Bobby (Mark Wahlberg) and Jack (Garrett Hedlund)) and two black guys (Angel (Tyrese) and Jeremiah (André 3000)) as brothers, all adopted by a no-nonsense Irish broad (Fionulla Flanagan, channelling Brenda Fricker) gunned down discreetly in the opening sequence by a ski-masked duo. Another revenge/home invasion flick (though closer as both to Batman Begins than to Red Eye), Four Brothers discusses race and class obliquely while running through its Sons of Katie Elder claptrap.

Therein lies the problem with Four Brothers: besides the fact of it and its proximity to other films like it, it isn't actually about anything. There's nothing like subtext to it--the women (mainly proto-bimbo Sofia Vergara) are screeching proto-bitches good for leaving the room when the men need to talk (and for spreading when the men need to fuck), and the police procedural (of which we, marinating in our "Law & Order"/"CSI" stew, are pseudo-experts) is woefully dated. How is it, for example, that the boys are able to review a surveillance tape of their mother's murder; and how do they clean out a hitman's apartment? What is it, exactly, that the police (Terrence Howard and Josh Charles) do in Detroit aside from being the obvious bad guys on the payroll of arch-villain Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor)? (Sweet, incidentally, is the stupidest baddie in many a moon, fond of humiliating his henchmen in emasculating ways that bring Johnny Dangerously to mind.) It's a revenge fantasy through-and-through, complete with remorseless executions administered by our heroes, a leering shot of a compound fracture inflicted by our heroes, and the decision to cast milquetoast, prep-school Charles as a heavy (wearing a Payne Stewart golf hat at one point, no less)--the only thing that could possibly be read as a shot across the racial bow.

What worked when blaxploitation worked (and Singleton never knew: see his remake of Shaft--or, for that matter, see the current Hustle & Flow, which he produced) was a strong sense of social injustice coupled with a kind of artistic protest: a wish-fulfillment that saw black men and women triumphing over the forces of oppression. Not personal outrage, just rage; there's no interest in four thugs avenging the thug-inspired death of their thug-loving mama--that's just formula and unkind caricature. When it's over, there's no possibility to extract the plight of these individuals or the situations that cast them into the role of psycho thrill-killers and no significance found in the literal reason their mother was at the centre of some Rube Goldbergian conspiracy. When it's over, it's forgotten. The car chases are workmanlike, the performances are what they are, and the plot developments fall with the predictable patter of a metronome. Shots of sentimentality mix uneasily with bits of machismo bravado, with the whole of Four Brothers washing out as a combination of Singleton trying to appease the people he portrayed with a degree of artistry in Boyz N the Hood at the same time he sells them out to the idiots who showed up for 2 Fast 2 Furious. As ugly pictures go, Four Brothers sidles up there near the top of the 2005 heap--but it's nothing to get too excited about one way or another. Unable to inspire, it's equally incapable of offending: just another 2005 movie about home invasion avenged bloody eye for bloody eye.-Walter Chaw

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