Four Brothers Flops

There's a pretty cool shoot-out scene in this movie. There's also a pretty cool car chase. Other than that, I really have a hard time finding any other redeeming factors in John Singleton's Four Brothers .

The movie tells the story of four very different guys who have in common one foster mother who was murdered during a convenience store robbery. When the four brothers come back to hometown Detroit for the funeral, they decide to avenge their mother's death. Through a series of complicated missions that are often unrelated to the ultimate goal, the brothers tear apart the city looking for the conspirators who killed their mother. Here's where the real influences for this movie become clear.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an extremely violent and realistic-looking video game in which CJ (Carl Johnson) comes back to the 'hood to take revenge on the gangbangers who killed his mother. He enlists the help of his brother and other homies to help him on his adventure to rid the neighborhood of crack dealers and gangs (at least other gangs).

Through a series of complicated missions that are often unrelated to the ultimate goal, CJ is involved in shootouts, car-chases, killing crooked cops, and intrastate travel for the functional purpose of building problem-solving skills and the satisfying feeling of killing bad guys on screen. The main difference between GTA and Four Brothers is that the game is fun and entertaining, and even when the plot seems convoluted, there's still a thread that connects each series of adventures.

Mark Wahlberg plays Bobby, the hard-assed bad-boy brother, Tyrese plays Angel, the good-looking loverman, André 3000 plays Jeremiah, the bad-kid-made-good, and Garrett Hedlund plays Jack, the rock 'n' roll little brother who Bobby is constantly making gay jokes about.

The juxtapositioning of the contrasting brothers is supposed to show us that despite their difference in lifestyle and race, a common goal can unite them. It ends up feeling hackneyed and forced. There are a number of obvious black/white/family jokes that you've probably seen if you ever saw Money Train with Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, and the writers do a poor job of developing the plot towards a climax, although much of the blame for that can be shared with Mr. Singleton.

The director comes off of the back-to-back critical and commercial failures of 2 Fast 2 Furious and Baby Boy , and unfortunately doesn't show any of the grit and craftsmanship that he did in his first film Boyz n the Hood . In one scene, a cop approaches Wahlberg and tells him that they've found a hair on the body of a recently-killed gangbanger, and it belongs to him.

"The fake hair to try and get a confession out of me routine? That's the oldest trick in the book!" There's a lot of "oldest trick in the book" material going on in Four Brothers , and most audiences will find themselves just as unimpressed as Mr. Wahlberg.