Feral Vigilantes

Newcastle Herald

Monday November 14, 2005

REVIEW by PHILIPPA HAWKER The Age

FOUR BROTHERS (M)

Director: John Singleton

Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Andre Benjamin, Garrett Hedlund, Tyrese Gibson

Screening: Glendale, Charlestown, Raymond Terrace, Cessnock, Tuggerah, Erina

Rating: ** 1/2

A SENTIMENTAL vigilante movie, Four Brothers starts out gritty and swaggering and gradually collapses into action set-pieces and silliness.

Directed by John Singleton (Boyz 'n' the Hood, Shaft), its title characters are a quartet of tough kids, black and white, adopted by a saintly foster mother. They were the kids whom no one else would take.

Three are troubled characters, one is now a family man. That they've survived to become adults is entirely due to the foster mother's influence.

They are reunited when their foster mother (Fionnula Flanagan) an elderly woman whom we have seen giving a tough-love lesson to a small child caught stealing is shot in a store hold-up.

Back in Detroit for her funeral, the boys start to wonder about the circumstances of her death and decide that she wasn't an accidental victim, but was deliberately killed.

From there, it's a tale of revenge, gunplay, corruption, Motown songs and wild plot leaps.

The boys don't trust the police. They go about their investigation, dispatching potential witnesses and likely evil doers with cheerful abandon.

The corruption goes deep, according to the plot, but the film goes feral, with car chases, sieges, shoot-outs and beatings. The Age

© 2005 Newcastle Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home