Brothers

Year:2007
Director:Derek Chiu Sung-Kei
Cast:Miu Kiu-Wai, Eason Chan Yik-Shun, Crystal Huang Yi, Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Felix Wong Yat-Wah, Ken Tong Chun-Yip, Wang Zhiwen, Gordon Lam Ka-Tung, Teddy Lin Chun, Elaine Kam Yin-Ling, Henry Fong Ping, Yu Rong-Guang, Lam Suet, Eddie Cheung Siu-Fai, Wong Ching, Li Shun-Yan
Description:
When reviewing an Andy
Lau film it's best to get one thing out of the way:
product placement. In Brothers, Andy Lau pushes
his signature bottled green tea drink, seen in most
of his recent films from Infernal Affairs to
Prot間� not to mention the incredibly crass
All About Love. That last movie also featured
an obnoxious cameo from a CYMA watch, which gets an
extreme close-up when a single tear drops in slow
motion onto its ultra-magnified face. The connection:
Andy Lau pushes that watch brand full force in print
advertisements all over Hong Kong.
The CYMA watch makes a return
in Brothers, where Lau, playing cop Inspector
Lau, offers it to a subordinate as payment for some
unnamed debt. He's just kidding about parting with
his beloved watch, but by removing the watch and placing
it on his desk, Lau gives audiences yet another close-up
glimpse of the CYMA watch's luxurious, beveled design,
which surely makes it a masterful, timeless, uh, timepiece.
It's also an opportunity for audience groans, which
most assuredly will happen if the audience knows anything
about Andy Lau, pitchman extraordinaire. Thanks Andy,
for earning your check.
Lest we forget, there's also
a movie, and though Andy Lau gets much more screentime
than his CYMA watch, its arguable if he has much more
impact. Lau is only a glorified supporting player
in Brothers, a gangland thriller from director
Derek Chiu that's most famous for reuniting TVB's
Five Tigers, who were so dubbed back in the eighties
as some sort of marketing push by the local television
behemoth. Actually, only four of the Tigers return.
The missing Tiger is none other than Tony Leung Chiu-Wai,
who's too busy having an international film career,
leaving the other four tigers - Andy Lau, Felix Wong,
Miu Kiu-Wai, and Ken Tong - to represent, along with
Eason Chan, who we assume is the Tony Leung stand-in.
Chan has turned in some decent
work recently in Hooked on You and The Pye-Dog,
and having him around is actually quite promising.
To the younger actor's credit, he holds his own versus
the grizzled veterans surrounding him. Chan plays
Shun Tam, the brother to gang boss Yiu Tam .
Shun is now returning from his education in the states
after an assassination attempt on their dad, Tin Tam
. The attempt comes courtesy of rival
triad Uncle Nine , who angles to knock
off both Tin Tam and Yiu Tam and install both he and
his son, Kui , as the new leaders.
However, the wily Yiu Tam
seems to be one step ahead of Uncle Nine and Kui,
apparently expecting their treachery and betrayal.
What is unexpected is Yiu's attitude towards his brother
Shun, who's completely na飗e to criminal procedure,
constantly trying to call the cops and usually getting
grief from the uncooperative Inspector Lau, who's
all hot and bothered about catching Yiu Tam and not
anyone else. As Uncle Nine and Kui begin to take violent
action, Yiu Tam starts to take steps to get his brother
out of harm's way.
Or is he? There's a curious
edge to Yiu's actions, almost like he may be trying
to get his brother killed instead. This is because
of a prophecy once told to his father, that the two
brothers would one day do harm to each other. Of course,
Tin Tam didn't want that, which is why he sent Shun
to the States instead of having him hang in Hong Kong
with Yiu. Armed with this knowledge, Yiu could be
trying to hurt his younger brother, and his actions
sometimes seem to imply that. This disturbs Yiu's
right-hand man Ghostie , who cares for Shun like a younger brother
and doesn't want to see him hurt. However, one major
reason why Yiu probably isn't out to off his brother
is because he's a stand-up guy with a righteous attitude,
and besides, he has a terminal disease due to off
him soon anyway. So, if he's not trying to kill his
brother, why is he sometimes such a jerk? Meanwhile,
the cops glower in the background while Kui angles
to knock off Yiu, and Shun is still caught in the
middle. Will he slink off quietly, or become corrupted
by these triad shenanigans?
The film's large cast of
familiar names is a marketing plus, with actors like
Lam Suet, Elaine Kam, Eddie Cheung, Gordon Lam, and
Yu Rong-Guang supporting the Four Tigers Plus Eason.
The downside is that there are now more characters
than need be, though thankfully the filmmakers keep
the extraneous subplots to a minimum. Instead of too
many subplots, however, we get an abundance of overused
themes, including ones involving family, righteousness,
loyalty, destiny, responsibility, justice, and a bunch
of other stuff that should be familiar to people who've
seen more than one Hong Kong triad film from the late
eighties or early nineties.
Brothers seems cut
from the same cloth as those earlier films, which
usually starred Andy Lau, Alan Tam, Alan Tang, and
probably a few other actors whose names begin with
"A". The stories were generally the same: real-life
brothers stuck in the triad must demonstrate their
loyalty to one another while also fending off ill-tempered
rival triads and occasionally overzealous cops. Brothers
isn't over-the-top or rough-around-the-edges like
earlier genre entries, though it does serve up partial
Cantonese-dubbing and rock-like English-language dialogue
, which may fool some
viewers into thinking they're watching an early nineties-relic.
That nostalgia doesn't necessarily
translate into a great film, however. Brothers
has a solid concept, decent acting, and even some
minor tension due to Yiu's murky motivations, but
the total experience is more generic than some sort
of welcome genre revitalization. Brothers has
received some local comparison to The Godfather,
though one would hope that's due to similar themes
and not the belief that this film could ever equal
The Godfather in quality. Brothers should
never be mentioned in the same breath as the Francis
Ford Coppola masterpiece, though it could be favorably
compared to Jiang Hu.
Brothers is simply
pulpy, familiar stuff that gets a reverent treatment
thanks to director Derek Chiu, who dresses it up with
talky seriousness and some occasional directorial
flourishes meant to add gravity to a film already
weighed down by pre-supposed genre meaning. Some of
his choices are oddly stylistic. A car is side-swiped
and its side mirror floats through the air in slow-motion,
pretty lawyer Ching reacts psychically
to an event occurring many miles away, multiple scenes
are punctuated with a slow pan and fade-out. What
does all this signify, exactly? Who the hell knows,
but Chiu calls heavy attention to these choices with
a jarring self-consciousness, giving them perhaps
undeserved meaning. Brothers isn't unforgivably
heavy-handed, but it does flirt conspicuously with
pretentiousness.
The characters and details
don't really register either, and the film's slow,
unavoidable path to destiny isn't as much powerful
as it is simply predictable. Given the film's opening
shot, which gives the audience a peek at the climax
of the film, plus the existence of a foretold prophecy
and the terminal disease plot device, the film basically
announces its intentions very early. The question
then is how the film will get there, and if the journey
is involving and compelling. The decent story, solid
performances and Chiu's direction handle the involving
part - it's just that the compelling part gets away
from them. Brothers touches all the proper
bases, but it doesn't affect enough to warrant grander
emotions, or the significance that Chiu's sometimes
showy directorial choices seem to imply.
Ultimately, Brothers
is just standard, competent, audience-friendly stuff
that's mostly interesting for reasons outside of the
actual film, like the reunion of four of the Five
Tigers, or Miu Kiu-Wai's curious rise from the fourth
Tiger to solid leading man . Also of note is Andy Lau's perfunctory supporting
role, which the superstar handles professionally and
in a dazzlingly uninteresting manner. And then there's
the CYMA watch, which is unforgettable if you have
any idea what CYMA means to the people who have to
stare at Andy Lau hawking them everyday. In Hong Kong,
you simply can't get away from Andy Lau and his CYMA
watch, so having to be reminded of it so bluntly is
distracting enough that it can break whatever fictional
reality a film is trying to attempt. Even without
the CYMA watch, Brothers is just an okay film,
but with it, there's only one thing Brothers
can really be: a product.