Brotherhood Review: 6 Ups & 5 Downs

Downs

5. It's Quite Silly & Cliched

As much as Brotherhood does represent a step-up for writer-director-producer-star Noel Clarke in terms of dramatic storytelling, it's still ultimately a familiar yarn you've seen better executed in countless other movies.

The former thug reforms and becomes a productive member of society, in this case Clarke's protagonist Sam Peel, but of course, figures from his old life re-emerge with vengeance on their minds, so Sam has to return to his violent ways in order to protect his wife and kids. You know exactly where it's going, and it delivers little in the way of surprise.

It's standard crime thriller fare and shot through with a solid side order of silliness, especially by way of Jason Maza's hilariously over-the-top antagonist Daley. It's so daft and shamelessly melodramatic at times that it almost feels like a campy parody of urban dramatic thrillers, even if that does lend it an unexpectedly perverse entertainment factor the more serious prior films in the series lacked.