Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Takeshi-K This is the only film Japanese crime filmmaking legend, Kitano Takeshi, has ever made in America. He has flatly refused to make a film outside the confines of Japan ever since.Takeshi started his career as a TV variety show host and comedian before trading his mic for pistols. Having gone the gangster route, crime film fans around the world have rejoiced ever since. For those of us that grew up in Asia though that transition was something of a shock. Think Regis and Kathy Lee doing Godfather IV. Weird right?This film opens up in Japan, deep within Yakuza held territory. Takeshi plays a character called Aniki, the right hand man of his Yakuza master, whose every whim must be satisfied at all times. Underlings scurry about opening doors, lighting cigarettes, procuring young Women. After foiling an assassination plot, his boss is killed anyway and for his dishonor, Aniki is ordered to flee to America until the heat dissipates.Humiliated, he strides around the mean streets of Los Angeles' underworld something worse than a marked man - he is now a masterless Ronin, without honor. This may not be true, but I like to think that his character abounds in Samurai lore. His behavior is of a man that is already philosophically dead in much the same way that the noble Samurai's code of Bushido extols that a true warrior must always think of himself as already dead, thus there is no fear in the face of one's enemy. Kitano's dead eyed greeting toward an unfamiliar modern world is stunning in it's simplicity and underpins what I just wrote.There is the usual fish out of water language confusion. He over tips the cab driver and gets abused by some racist American slob - "The asshole doesn't even speak English!"He finds his younger "brother" (not his real brother - they were both adopted), but rather a young man he also calls "Aniki" which we soon realize is not his actual name, but a cool word meaning "brother" in Japanese. The two of them call each other that. Nice touch.Anyway Aniki gets angry when he finds out that his younger "brother" has quit school and his job, in order to sell drugs with some Black and Hispanic hoodlums. Aniki quickly asserts his authority by single handedly slaughtering the local drug dealers who have been bullying the young hoodlums he just met, thus impressing them no end into happily accepting his tutelage in the world of strong arm extortion and drugs.So begins Aniki's rise to power, eventually stepping on some very powerful toes - namely the Italian American Mafia. A war ensues, throttling this excellent crime film towards it's cataclysmic and bloody finale. Epic stuff indeed 9/10

oneguyrambling The director of this film is Takeshi Kitano, the star is Beat Takeshi... or vice-versa. But they are both the same guy, he acts under one name and directs under the other for some reason. I could care less what he calls himself, Brother rocks.The plot concerns a loyal Yakuza henchman named Aniki who is forced to leave Japan when his Boss is killed and he refuses to kowtow and join a rival gang. He is sent to America where he looks up his younger brother who has gone off the rails a little bit. Not joined-the-Yakuza path, but dabbling in minor drug dealing and stuff.Aniki (means Big Brother in Japanese) promptly takes over the rabble and forms his own gang of 5. Not content with running his own small time show he promptly sets about an expansion program that would leave his shareholders giddy (if they existed). Only like the dot-com boom and bust Aniki operates in a field with many competitors and precious few behavioral boundaries, so this was never going to end happily.What sets Brother apart from the usual drug wars' films is that it isn't made like one. There are long dialogue-free scenes that are allowed to roll out and develop at their own pace, only to be punctuated by sudden acts of great violence, and not the "guy leaps into air after explosion" violence, I mean "guy gets chopsticks forcefully pushed into skull" stuff, or "man picks up broken bottle and sticks it in other man's eye".Aniki himself speaks no English upon arriving in the US, so his instructions are passed down through his little brother and eventually his 2IC Kato that followed him across from Japan and shows unwavering loyalty at all times. Aniki grabs himself a girlfriend, although it is never shown if she is actually his platonic missus or a trinket (or even a pet) that he likes around, and his best friend in the gang is Denny (Omar Epps), a young thug and the unfortunate recipient of the broken bottle mentioned above. The two bond over gambling on anything and everything, despite not speaking each other's language, and it seems that Aniki wants to take Denny under his wing from almost Day 1.As the "business" expands it takes over new turf and incites anger from new enemies and rivals. Everything is run with the Yakuza code of honour and disloyalty and betrayal are both met with savage repercussions. Unfortunately if there is one thing that the Star Wars prequels showed us (aside from not knowing when to stop) it is that "there is always a bigger fish". Ultimately the gang grows too big and a mad scramble is made to flee as the tone changes.It is hard to discuss Brother without making it sound like a whiz-bang action film, it isn't that though. It has action elements sure, but maybe 4 brief scenes in the movie, a far cry from your Lethal Weapons and co... Brother is more a deliberately paced drama that tells a familiar story, but in a different way and with an unfamiliar backdrop.For some reason I found it compelling at all times, even in the slow(er) spots when it seemed to pause for no reason, and I wanted it to continue on and on. I've seen Brother maybe 5 times now, and each time I pick up the DVD cover I know how great this film is, but I press play and let the following 2 hours prove it to me again.As bat-sh*t crazy as some aspects of Japanese culture seem to Westerners these days, there is a lot to admire about the way they conduct their business at times, even in a violent crime film (and I am no Scarface / New Jack City slack-jawed admirer of all things criminal).Final Rating - 8.5 / 10. A pretty straightforward plot: Guy starts business. Business grows. Business hits trouble. But told in a very effective way.

jeffdiggy You know the Dos Equis commercials with "the most interesting man alive"? You KNOW he's not the most interesting man alive, but the comic genius, style and humor of the one-liners force you to engage the possibility of A most interesting man. "Brother" is literally the worst movie I have ever watched! It is worse than a college film or short made by a child. It was SO hard to watch, but I was simply amazed that Omar Epps would be in such a horrible film...but now understand how his career went down the shoot. This movie made him look like (or revealed him to be) a HORRIBLE actor. I had never thought he was great before, but this was just disgraceful. This movie actually caused me pain to watch. It was like one of those rags to riches stories...but you just don't have any idea of HOW everybody got to the riches...or, more importantly, WHY???? And for you people (those) who gave this movie a 10 - did the filmmaker pay you to join this website and vote 10s??? HOW could ANYONE (even a mentally retarded or highly-challenged individual) vote beyond a 2?? It actually had potential (concept/story-wise), but was TOTALLY unbelievable! And the acting!?! MY GOD!!! The acting was just like vomit ingested...and vomited AGAIN!!!

m10001 I like gangster movies. I like Japanese movies. You see that Beat Takeshi stars, directs and edits the movie and you may fear that he's an egomaniac and the film will be self-indulgent. It's not. It's got a unique point of view. It's got nobility. Takeshi's character is noble. One of his followers is noble. One would say that the family feeling in this movie is sweet, if it would not be weird to talk about the sweetness of a movie as blood-spattered as this one is. And this one is blood-spattered. My wife, whose taste in movies is usually much more sanguinary than mine, stopped watching it before it was over, so violent were the obeisances made to show faithfulness. This movie would be utterly unsuitable for children because of blood and guts and language. But it's funny. It's funny and honorable people gain moral victories and family members as well as people unrelated by blood show each other brotherly love. I fear for this culture-- our world culture-- that the only movie where I have seen honor and brotherly love lately is this film filled to overflowing with buckets of blood.