Product: Brother [VHS]
Rating: 2.0
Obtuse, synthetic, and silly albeit very stylish nonsense
I had to smile when in the second-last scene a character's dialogue (subtitle) include the word "inscrutable". That is the term I had been contemplating since about 10 minutes into this vapid two hour flic.I'm really stunned by some other reviews saying things like "Japanese version of The Godfather" and "accurate portrayal of the Yakuza". The only Godfather this might compare to, on rating alone, would be Godfather III which was a bomb. And this is a valid portrayal of Yakuza gansters only if your average Yakuza is a suicidal halfwit with the emotions and intellect of a delinquent street urchin."Brother" has a stylish light-jazz soundtrack, very hip art direction and a cool aesthetic look which are enough to make you want to like the film.Unfortunately, that's a tall order. The dialogue is juvenile (at least the english subtitling anyway), perhaps the Japanese language is better. The characters are plastic and one dimensional. The script is ludicrous, not the slightest grasp on reality of gangster society. Law enforcement is virtually non-existent in this movie since the gangster can slaughter each other in non-stop extravagant violence and almost never encounter the police. Killing is wanton and practically without any character motivation or response much of the time ... you're just left wondering. Compared to other gangster flics, there is almost no credibility in any part of this story.This movie is optimized aesthetic silliness, with mindless two-second murders by the dozen, all committed to a jazzy sax soundtrack. At the midpoint, I was pondering whether to continue watching as the movie descended into the abyss. I only persisted to the end in order to see how low would actually sink.This movie is as bad as "Knock Off", "The Negotiator", and "Showdown in Little Tokyo", probably worse.If you really want to see an ultra-hip, stylized, aesthetics-over-plot film, try "The Odd One Dies" (Hong Kong, 1997) or "Fallen Angels" (1995), both with Takeshi Kaneshiro. Or an equally obtuse and bizarre film, but nonetheless very stylized action pulp noire, try Seijun Suzuki's classic "Branded To Kill" (1967). Or better yet, try "The Big Hit" (1998) with mark Wahlberg and Lou Diamond Phillips, which is another mindless but entertaining killing spree which doesn't take itself too seriously."Brother" is a disappointment. It is very nicely art-directed, and not much else. This is not the "Godfather" of the Yakuza genre. I am not flying solo in my critical view, the 69 reviews on RT have it at 51% thumbs down. One reviewer summed up my feelings well in his comment: "Rarely has such an artful aesthetic been used to craft such sadistically violent junk."...