John Singleton has earned my permanent wrath as a storyteller in black and white. It started as the kind of hate only poets can sustain, way back in the early 90s when he broke onto the scene with Boyz N The Hood. Of course it was his trumpeted brilliance as a USC Film student that got me interested in the first place. But the fact of the matter is I hate how he eviscerated all of my bourgie friends in the Dons from his filmic vision of the emerging myth of Southcentral LA. I can't remember which one of the two gave me greater heartburn, Terry McMillan or John Singleton. But that was then.
Today, it cannot be argued that Singleton is anything but an accomplished and mature filmmaker. So there are really no excuses to be had for his latest film 'Four Brothers'.
FB lies in the space between action and drama, a good story and clever entertainment. In the end, the thing it's not is a smart and funny film. It's almost smart and almost funny. In the end, the whole thing just breaks apart when you realize that somehow you are suppsed to feel empathy for a gang of brothers who shot up half of Detroit in a vendetta against the killers of their mother.
The timing and the editing of this film is just miserable. Too many shots of actors looking off in the distance behind the camera. Turn the camera around, dammit. Too many drawn out scenes.. ah. It could have been better but it wasn't.
Since I'm feeling rather combattive and restive this evening, I'll just cruise around looking for people to defend Singleton's singularly gritty hard-knock life. This one could have been fun like 'Biker Boyz' but I think he scotched the potential of this one.
I give it 72%
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