Herald rating: **
As with Assault of Precinct 13, Narc and even 8 Mile, Four Brothers isn't about to change Detroit's fortunes as a potential tourist destination.
There might be Motown on the radio but there's snow on the dirty streets and violence in the frosty air.
But the ground
is still soft enough to allow for deep plot holes in its tale of four racially mixed brothers-by-adoption avenging the murder of the foster mother who set them on the straight and narrow.
Its soundtrack and involvement of director Singleton (once again indicating that his breakthrough debut Boyz N The Hood was a fluke) suggests this might be a blaxploitation update along the likes of Dead Presidents.
But, like the aforementioned Assault remake, it's also recognisable as a stetson-free Western, one where the really bad guys come with assault rifles and SUVs and their meaner-than-mean boss wears a very pimped-out fur coat
Granted, it does attempt to build some sense of character among the leading quartet - with Wahlberg as the trigger-happy hothead and OutKast's Benjamin as the level-headed family man who stayed behind in Detroit after his "siblings" left town.
The four's reunion is the cue for a few tears and that next stage of the grieving process - vigilantism.
Which means frequent hails of bullets and a car chase that is perhaps the film's most memorable sequence for its snow-skidding thrills.
But, as the quartet try to find out who shot their dear old mum in an apparent convenience store robbery, Four Brothers' whodunit loses traction in its own action flick slickness.
It ends up just sitting there revving hard, going nowhere, lost somewhere in downtown Detroit.
CAST: Mark Wahlberg, Andre Benjamin, Tyrese Gibson, Garrett Hedlund, Terence Howard
DIRECTOR: John Singleton
RATING: M (contains violence, sexual references & offensive language)
RUNNING TIME: 109 mins
SCREENING: Village Hoyts
