noralee

"Four Brothers" takes an off-kilter premise and makes it credible, even though over-the-top violence challenges the extensive efforts to create realism.

The film is anchored in the strong, macho camaraderie of the four excellent lead actors who convincingly portray two white and two African-American boys raised together as rough foster brothers adopted by a kind-hearted ex-hippie. The easy chemistry among the four is physical, both in interactions and how they move around their childhood home, and in their running graphic teasing. Their back story is smoothly relayed as police report summaries by Terrence Howard, convincingly using his third accent in a film this summer after "Crash" and "Hustle & Flow." (Also stay for the credits when sort of home movies are shown about the brothers' earlier experiences.) While Mark Wahlberg's swagger is a bit much, though worked in as an ex-hockey player context, each actor effectively embodies a unique character at a raw point in his life. Particularly outstanding as non-stereotypes are Garrett Hedlund, as an androgynous rocker haunted by past abuse, and André Benjamin, as a husband and father struggling with a business. Brit Chiwetel Ejiofor very effectively masters Americana as a head hood.

While director John Singleton said on "Charlie Rose" that he sees the film as a Western in the tradition of John Ford and Howard Hawks, it's more like Sam Pekinpah crossed with detective "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" twisty noir vengeance mysteries. The gritty one-on-one confrontations are much more effective than the exaggerated machine gunned destruction, even as Singleton brings unexpected poignancy to a key rampage through a sympathetic victim that is heartbreaking.

Ironically the ex-marine brother is not the lead expert of the four with guns. While this seems like the third in a recent trilogy of using Detroit as a violent wasteland, after the remake of "Assault on Precinct 13" and "Land of the Dead," Singleton accents the usual urban abandonment scenes by telescoping the action between wintry Thanksgiving to Christmas of constant snow, culminating in a white frozen climax that is more cleverly mano a mano and less violent than the preliminary confrontations. It would recall Springsteen's "Meeting Across The River" except that the soundtrack song selections instead superbly are later Motown, visualized nostalgically with '45's playing with the notable local skyline on that dark blue label. The rocker brother is a nice tribute to the city's white kick out the jams heritage as well. Unfortunately, the instrumental score is clunky and unsubtle.

The women are strictly ancillary for stereotypical uses, though respected by the men. Sofía Vergara as the "La Vida Loca" old irresistible girlfriend feistily adds to the multicultural mix.

Both for the violence and the blunt language, I thought it was really inappropriate that parents brought young children to the matinée I attended.

(Revised 29 March 2008 - evidently the version I submitted on 22 August 2005 offended someone)

"Croupier" is thinking-person's noir, very much like "Spanish Prisoner" or "House of Games" or "Hard Eight." The voice over doesn't 100% work, but has some rationale as literally a writer's voice.

While Clive Owens' intense performance is the primary reason to see the film, it does provide the opportunity to again see Alex Kingston in a role almost as sexy as in TV's "Moll Flanders." It has a nicely complex plot that reverses and turns in and around and keeps you guessing and then swirls back again.

It is worth seeing on a big screen.

(originally written 5/2/2000)(revised 3/29/2008 as my version submitted on 30 November 2005 offended someone)

"Dirty Pretty Things" returns director Stephen Frears to the multi-ethnic, working class Britain of his early success "My Beautiful Laundrette," but now he's looking at illegal immigrants from countries that were not necessarily part of the British Empire and are more desperate.

It is a shadow world of fear more commonly shown in American films than British ones -- and that's without including any information of how they got there, what with the news full of crushed train-runners in the Chunnel and limp smuggled bodies in trucks and boats. Audrey Tatou is far from the gamine American audiences were first introduced to, as a prickly Turkish immigrant.

The plot has twisty and intricate double-crosses that reminded me of the old sci fi movie "Coma," not just natives vs. immigrants, but frequently fellow immigrants manipulating, abusing, and taking advantage of others lower on the food chain as they use every possible trick to survive.

While we get a glimpse at the very complex motivations of the push/pull driving immigration, from social and religious restrictions to political refugees to economic betterment, there is a bit too much of the Noble Immigrant vs. the venal Nativists, culminating in a very explicit statement of assertion that could be straight from the mouth of John Steinbeck's Tom Joad: "We are the invisible ones who clean your rooms . . ." with a much more explicit etc. about being used as sex workers. But they are individuated and we care for the individuals very much.

As far as I could tell, the title is not explicitly referred to, but the accents are frequently difficult to decode.

(REVISED March 29, 2008 as my original submission on 31 August 2003 evidently offended someone, probably due to a direct quote I included from the film's dialog.)