Brothers

Hong Kong mafia movies are a dime a dozen and, with so few of them rising to critical and box-office acclaim (the Infernal Affairs series is the only recent one that comes to mind), I guess filmmakers are having to turn to more innovative measures to make sure that their gangster movies stand out from the rest. Sometimes, though, that’s not a good thing.

Brothers, featuring a star-studded cast that includes four of the five Tigers of the TVB station in the 80s (with Tony Leung the only absentee), is the latest mafia-related show to reach local shores.

The story is basic, cliché fair: A pair of brothers separated from young due to a divination lot that said they would end up killing each other, reunite after twenty years when their father, a retired triad leader, is stabbed and lands up in hospital. What follows is a dull and utterly predictable story that involves lots of cat-and-mouse with the police, lots of killing and violence as well as the usual rivalry between gangs and, as the title states, some brotherly relationship development. I won’t give any more details or spoilers here because there’s really nothing much to spoil. The ending can be seen a mile away.

The acting, while competent, is nothing to shout about. Michael Miu plays a credible mafia boss who’s trying to teach his brother, played by Eason Chan (although one finds it hard to believe that the two, who look so different in age, could be brothers born within a few years of each other), the tricks of the trade while Andy Lau steals the show with his cheeky and smart-mouthed police inspector.

Perhaps to set the movie apart from others, the creators of the film have taken to using a huge variety of different filming effects, ranging from extreme up-close motion shots to wide panoramic shots with the subject material only at one end of the screen to random sudden scene transitions, to liven up the show. Unfortunately, while some of the shots are pure genius and succeed in lending a slight noir feel to the show, most of them are functionally redundant and end up adding a discordant, schizophrenic air to the movie. The sound effects, too, are a hit-and-miss, jumping from pop rock to creepy horror flick to ballad within seconds, giving a very jarring effect.

Brothers is a movie only for die-hard HK gangster drama freaks or fans of the Tigers, all of whom have aged considerably.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars