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PLOT: Four men, who were raised as brothers when adopted by an angelic children's care worker in Detroit, reunite to avenge her brutal murder. Mayhem ensues.
Four Brothers is one crazy movie. Crazy good at times, crazy bad at times, crazy wild all the time.
It is a contempory revenge fantasy -- Death Wish on steroids. But it is allowed to run riot with frontier justice, as if it were a Hollywood shoot-'em-up Western -- Gunfight At The OK Corral with machine guns and other heavy artillery.
Set in Detroit but filmed in Toronto and on Lake Simcoe deep in a Canadian winter, Four Brothers is the work of filmmaker John Singleton, still best known for his debut ghetto classic Boyz N The Hood.
That film earned Singleton a double Oscar nomination for best director and best original screenwriter. I guarantee that Four Brothers will not figure into the Oscars. But there are some similarities between the films because Singleton adds his signature to all his work, from Boyz through Shaft and even to a generic commercial work such as 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Not incidentally, Singleton says that all of his movies, including Boyz, are made in the tradition of Hollywood Westerns, so he is proud Four Brothers invokes that spirit.
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Part of his approach is to ensue that key characters are archetypes and yet slightly off-kilter, giving them unique personalities even when they fill a role in a formulaic plot. Casting is crucial, of course, and Four Brothers is cast well.
Chief among them is Mark Wahlberg as the incendiary brother, a criminal hothead who leads his brothers on the revenge trip, after the requisite teary-eyed funeral. Perhaps more than ever, Wahlberg uses his own petty criminal past to fuel a fictional performance, and it works, with lapses.
Two musicians, Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000) and Tyrese Gibson, play the African-American brothers in the quartet, doing so with style and gusto. Newcomer Garrett Hedlund (who made his film debut as Patroclus opposite Brad Pitt in Troy) is the second Caucasian brother, the victim among them because he is vulnerable. For levity, Tyrese is given a temperamental Latino girlfriend (bombshell Sofia Vergara, who will get young men's hearts beating faster).
The racial mix, which was always part of the script by David Elliot and Paul Lovett, is interesting because Singleton does little with it other than let the four crack borderline jokes about each other, as real brothers would. I like that. In an era when race seems to divide people, it is refreshing to have the issue dealt with so casually, without polarization.
The first two acts in Four Brothers are done somewhat realistically, with gusts of forgiveable lunacy. The final act is completely over the top. That might alienate segments of the audience, although certainly not the target group of young males who get off on the stylistic violence.
There are also some flat-out silly moments, such as Wahlberg crying or the "ghost" scene in which each of the brothers imagines their dead foster mom joining them for dinner and life lessons.
But, as trite as it gets, the heart of the film beats in the core of the piece -- the crazy, macho, Old West relationship of the Four Brothers.
(This film is rated 14-A)