Review: 'Blood Brother' comes out guns ablazing
Posted Monday, January 28, 2019 at 3:17 PM Central
by John Couture
While Blood Brother might not the most exciting new release this week, I found it the most intriguing as yet another moral study in race relations close on the heels of the wonderful Blindspotting. While the earlier film took time to develop the characters and lead to a tense climax, Blood Brother preferred to take a more guns-first approach.
When childhood friends escalate their criminal rap sheets with an opportunistic crime, one of them is captured and sent away to prison. When he's released from prison, he starts to enact his revenge on those he felt conspired to send him away.
The story starts with promise as a gang of juvenile delinquents for lack of a better word get in over their heads when a golden opportunity literally lands in their laps. With most of the heavy lifting done for them, they just have to remove one last eyewitness to skate away with $3 million from a botched armored truck heist.
Naturally, the one that kills the guard is caught and sent away to prison while his cohorts on the outside live their lives. One of them even becomes a cop, but they stick true to their code and the money is untouched when their gang brother is released from prison. Not content to simply split the money and go on his way, he feels betrayed and 15 years in the big house did little to rehabilitate his psychotic impulses.
After the first act, I was really looking forward to seeing a complex dynamic of the imprisoned person trying to get back into the swing of society all the while having to come to terms that his friends have grown while his path was stunted. Instead, he's only become even more psychotic and is hellbent on ruining the lives of his former friends.
Trey Songz plays the friend that becomes the cop and while I wasn't that familiar with his acting resumé, I came away impressed with his acting chops. Better known for his musical abilities, Trey is one of several singers that fill out the cast in Blood Brother. While Fetty Wap and China Anne McClain don't get as much screen time as Trey, their performances were better than expected from the usual musicians trying to break through in acting.
Jack Kesy, who plays the brother that goes away to prison, is probably the most accomplished actor in the bunch and he turns in an admirable psychotic performance, but I was hoping for a little more nuance. I get it, the time in prison messed with his already warped view of reality and he has a singular purpose when released. But if I buy that premise, then how did he ever persuade a parole board that he was fit to be released back into society?
Again the performances were strong, but the script doesn't do them any favors despite a promising premise. I'm really interested to see if the script changed during development to this more guns blazing action film and less about the interpersonal relations in the old gang. That's the interesting thing that I want to know about and a compelling reason to make this movie.
As it stands, it was hard for me to find much to care about beyond the ultimate, somewhat predictable resolution. These type of mindless action films are a dime a dozen on the video shelves, so you need some sort of hook to set yourself apart. Unfortunately, there's nothing here that you haven't seen a dozen times before.
Blood Brother is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.
