Four Brothers: Better Than I Thought It Would Be

[After a drought of blogging, this is my 3rd today. A sign I am probably not preparing for my interviews enough.]

I went to see Four Brothers, not expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised.

It's about 4 guys (Mark Wahlberg, Andre Benjamin of Outkast, Tyrese Gibson, and some guy named Garret Hedlund) who were raised by a sweet old foster mom and return to town after she is shot in cold blood. After some time of grieving, the "brothers" get to work finding the killers.

I was expecting a rather straightforward revenge flick, and that's mostly what it was. But the film had all sorts of nice touches. The rapport between the "brothers" - excluding a few cheesy scenes at the beginning - is realistic and touching. The best non-action scenes in the film were simply scenes of these four guys interacting. Best use of the phrase "rug burn" I've ever heard.

I loved the way minor characters, like the bad guy's henchmen, were given some sort of personality. I liked the ingenuity with which the bad guy did the typical humiliation of underlings. I liked a few plot twists that took even me by surprise.....I mean, some I saw from a mile away (one character walked into a scene and I thought.... "oh, he looks so killable right now"...I was right)....but some I didn't see coming.

And there was a kick-ass car chase. Car-chases are the oldest cliche of movies and they are rarely interesting. This one is.

Don't get me wrong.....Four Brothers isn't a masterpiece. It's not even the best movie of the late summer. (A title I'd give to Hustle and Flow, which also had Terrence Howard in it.) But it's still rather good.