Brothers (2024) | REVIEW

Directed by Max Barbakow — Screenplay by Macon Blair.

Max Barbakow’s Brothers, from a script by Macon Blair (I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore), is a buddy action crime comedy that follows twin brothers Moke (played by Josh Brolin) and Jady Munger (played by Peter Dinklage) who, after a shared history of crimes over the years, team-up to do ‘one last job’ together. During their previous ‘last job’ years ago, Jady was apprehended and sent to prison while Moke managed to get away, and so at the start of the film, they find themselves on opposite ends of life. Jady has just gotten out of prison, under suspicious circumstances, while Moke is trying to start a family and live as a law-abiding citizen. However, when Moke loses his job due to his criminal past, Jady finds an angle to convince his brother to join up with him for a road trip and a heist. Meanwhile, we discover that Jady made a shady deal with an aggressive crooked cop (played by Brendan Fraser) and his judge father (played by M. Emmet Walsh), who intend to keep track of whether or not Jady follows through on their deal.

Some things should just work. Although the collaborative creative process is never that simple, projects with all the right key ingredients should work at the end of the day. When you pair an up-and-coming director with a script from an actor-turned-filmmaker who has a growing cult following and, finally, with an ensemble cast consisting of multiple recent Emmy or Oscar nominees or winners, one would imagine that the end product should be a genuine must-see or, at the very least, a good film worth giving a shot. Despite its generic and overused title, Brothers, from Palm Springs director Max Barbakow, simply has all the right ingredients that should make up a good time, and yet it is, frustratingly, the kind of film that wastes an incredible amount of talent on a shockingly unfunny and unengaging narrative. Watchable and never outright bad but quite mediocre, it is a frustrating film precisely because it constantly feels like this film simply should be much better.  

In case it wasn’t made clear from the opening paragraph, the film is obviously built on a fairly generic and well-worn formula with several familiar plot beats and stock characters. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the film around it was executed in an efficient and exciting way, or if its comedy was up to a desirable level. However, despite at times reminding me of films like Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky or Every Which Way But Loose (or even the Danish Olsen Banden films), the film fails to be even a little bit as memorable as those films or the other films it is trying to pay homage to and be a modern update of. Although there are occasional moments that manage to raise eyebrows or inspire a chuckle or two, such as the film’s notable CG-animal scenes or the relatively entertaining (despite their familiarity) interactions between Walsh and Fraser’s characters, all too often the film meanders and fails to tap into the sense of fun that the film’s cast should help to bring forth.

Some of my favorite actors, Dinklage and Brolin — the latter playing somewhat against type — do a decent-enough job with the material they’re working with, but the film doesn’t get enough humor out of their pairing. Brendan Fraser is arguably the most entertaining aspect of the film given his over-the-top character, who really injects a somewhat goofy and silly tone into the film. Tomei feels particularly underserved with her character writing, as her talent ought to be given more to work with than a mildly strange and quirky romantic pen pal of Jady’s. It feels like a missed opportunity to not have Tomei give more of a wild energy to the film than she already does because she can definitely keep up with Fraser’s deliberate and entertaining over-the-topness, though she doesn’t get enough opportunities to do so. Finally, Glenn Close also makes an appearance as the titular siblings’ mother, and while it’s always a treat to see her in a film (though, I must admit, initially I thought it was Catherine O’Hara who had shown up on screen due to the haircut) she, too, doesn’t really have much of note to work with.

Not entirely unlike Jon Watts’ Wolfs, Max Barbakow’s Brothers is the kind of film that is wholly reliant on our fondness for its castmembers, because the material that they work with isn’t quite up to scratch due to its narrative elements, arcs, and characters feeling relatively played out, it not being particularly funny (it feels like all of the funniest scenes were seen in the trailers), and it being — despite certain crazy moments — surprisingly forgettable, all things considered. It’s not necessarily particularly bad, it’s just fairly undistinguished and frustratingly mediocre. It’s a disappointment because when you’ve got a cast this good working with some genuinely talented filmmakers, the film has to be more than merely generic, formulaic, and ineffective.

5 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.