Brotherhood (2010)

You won't be disappointed!

the audience applauded

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Kevin wants to join the in crowd of college so it's arranged that he and his friends have to rob convenience stores in order to be accepted . As it turns out the robberies are merely staged pranks . Unfortunately for Kevin and his peers a set of circumstances end up with Kevin being seriously injured and the rest of the group facing serious problems An independent thriller and one that often hits the target - until you stop to think about things of course . From the outset I found it puzzling why individuals had second thoughts about robbing stores . Wouldn't they have thought about that before being driven along a road ? But I guess that's the same thing with a massive number of films where the audience aren't supposed to examine the unseen events leading up to the opening scene of a movie . It also seems a bit extreme for armed robbery to part of frat high jinx but very quickly before the opening credits appear this is explained as being a prank from then on we've got a RESERVOIR DOGS type of story with a wounded man and his friends wondering how they're going to escape from their self inflicted predicament Thankfully the audience are spared any type of Tarantino post modernist homage and the narrative is full of tense moments but BROTHERHOOD isn't entirely successful due to contrived storytelling . Now it doesn't suffer from "An idiot plot" where the film would instantly stop if someone did something sensible but something has to happen in order to push the story regardless of it being entirely realistic . For example it just happens to be revealed that someone recognises the counter assistant in the robbed store and the rest of the film continues in the same way . Turn off your brain and you might enjoy it

Although I consider myself a pretty avid movie-fan I usually don't post reviews on this website because I've never really felt compelled to do so. That being said, I caught this movie on showtime while battling a bit of insomnia and I found it so incredibly irritating that I had to publicly voice my opinion. I don't even really know where to begin, I guess what was most troubling was how incredibly unrealistic every aspect of this story is. Everything that happens in this film and everyones reactions to those happenings is simply impossible to believe. Besides that, the writing was poor and the acting was brutal (how bad was the racist kid?). It's troubling to see this movie get so high of a rating, and to think that it won an award at a legitimate film festival truly blows my mind. Even more unbelievable was the positive feedback most critics gave to this film, what did they see in this film that I wasn't able to? If you find yourself in a similar situation to me, randomly tuning into this movie at 3 AM, do yourself a favor and turn the TV off immediately, those two hours of sleep are infinitely more valuable than this piece of trash film.

Brotherhood is an astute; compelling; stripped down piece looking at the allure of one's need to feel superior as well as the periodic need for young men to feed their own egotisms. When a character in the film has been shot, and is taken to somebody's student accommodation so as to be treated, one of the tenants demands an onlooker heavily involved in the situation urgently do something – demands he rapidly rejects out of not wanting to look small; inferior, nor as if he takes orders, whilst in front of a handful of first-year kids he desires to look authoritarian in front of. Never mind all the alcohol, or periodic use of casual drugs if that is the case; these kids are near to the point of sheer madness and danger through being high on testosterone and arrogance. Young American filmmaker Will Canon's debut feature is a breath of fresh air; a ruby amidst the rough of the American independent scene of oft snow-set quirksome squalor and adult subject matter being distilled through a filter of mainstreamisation. Here is a film with a fair number of robbery sequences; characters charging around an intimate urban locale wielding guns as well as young men verbally clashing with one another over heated issues - and yet in spite of this, is actually about something: neither manifesting into an exploitative crime film nor descending into the doldrums of being a lecturous chore.The film follows that of Adam, a fresher (or freshman in the set-world of America) played by Trevor Morgan, whose on the cusp of starting at a university and must undergo an immediate process in these, the dying embers of summer before the academic year begins, that'll see him inducted into the realms of a domestic fraternity. In spite of this, the film is essentially the process Adam is inclined to go through so as to reject the egotistical driven schooling-set world of showmanship; peer-pressure and the proving of one's masculinity: drinking a lot of booze and coming into possession of a firearm, albeit on separate occasions, does not make one a "man". When we begin, we begin in the confines of a van doing the rounds at a number of convenience stores; convenience stores which it would appear are being held up by a number of freshmen whose inauguration is being undertaken. But it is a sham, and where the frat-leader Frank's (Foster) excessive use of profanity in both questioning and challenging that of the other's masculinity has us question the competence of the screenwriter/director in their ability to broaden dialogue, we are swiftly put in our place thereafter when it's revealed the whole thing is a scare mongering act for the others yet to 'rob' somewhere.Disaster strikes when one of the fraternity hopefuls does indeed hold up a store, when the collecting of a bag of money from an insider already there is what should have happened. In waiting outside the incorrect store, a fraternity member dooms Kevin (Taylor-Pucci) to being the hapless kid shot by a clerk, an event which kicks off all manner of strife for those involved and causes some serious headaches for these people early on in their scholarly life before term has even begun. In the panic, Kevin is taken the a proverbial fraternity headquarters; the large party unfolding cut short when a spiteful, narcissistic, evil individual suddenly finds himself hosting a GSW victim after having previously been limited to meticulously organising ill-judged pranks on that of people not wanting to drink the amounts of alcohol forced upon them and not wanting to have an act of sex go wrong which has been wholly planned to.In feeding off an approach to its thesis more broadly reminiscent of Scorsese's After Hours or a vastly underrated crime thriller from a few years ago in the form of Running Scared, the film plunges its characters into a causality driven Hell where the rejection of proper authorities as well as professional medical attention forces those involved through a series of bleak night-set altercations and interactions, all the while our anchor in Adam gluing proceedings as this first-year kid daring to challenging the patriarchy. Canon does a great job in moving things along, allowing the bluntness of the opening sequences on how the fraternity operate dissolve into this unglamorous procession of lies and amorality wholly brought about by their own egomaniacal agenda; using the item of the individual bleeding to death as a wonderful device to keep tensions and deadlines heightened.In feeding off the above approaches, the piece harks back to an era of twenty-or-so years ago when films such as Reservoir Dogs dominated the independent crime scene. Here, Kevin's blood soaked person held up in a dingy locale as those refusing to back down from one another over varying issues calls to mind that of Keitel's, Buscemi's and Penn's respective bickering as Roth lied spread eagle in the aforementioned example; while the presence of Mike (Escarpeta), the young clerk at the store, echoes that of a certain Marvin Nash as we follow his exasperated arrival in earnest via the rear of somebody's car, brought closer to the mayhem and hit upon by the crew when it's revealed he may prove a threat. Like Tarantino, Canon has made a film with a quaint ability to escalate issues and disagreements out of one routine catalyst; a thousand diamond store robberies have happened in a thousand films, likewise with a shooting that was never meant to have been, but the aftermath and the heightened tension born out of it as varying elements struggle for total control are what drives our growing interest and trepidation in both examples. Where not as good, and with the distinct sense of it being a debut feature from a filmmaker with-room-to-grow, Brotherhood more than fits the bill for what it is, in what is a gratifying observation on where the sorts of behaviour therein has one arrive.

How far would you go to join a frat? After a initiation prank goes wrong and a pledge gets shot they are worried that he will end up in jail. A simple job of trying to cover up the prank ends up snowballing into something that could ruin the lives of all involved. I was extremely surprised by this movie. I immediately got sucked in and was engrossed the entire time. It begins with a van of pledges staging robberies until one gets shot. The night gets progressively worse as they try to fix more and more problems that occur. Talking about this too much I will end up giving something away, and this is a movie that will have you on the edge of your seat through most of it. Every once is a while a movie comes along that surprises you so much that you can't stop talking about it to others and this is one of those movies. Watch this movie, you won't be disappointed. I give it a B+.Would I watch again? - Yes, I think I would.*Also try - Sorority Row & Twelve