REVIEW: Brotherhood

BROTHERHOOD

Reviewer Dexter Kong
Rated: 15 (UK)
Drector: Will Canon
Cast: Trevor Morgan, Jon Foster, Lou Taylor Pucci, Arlen Escarpeta, Jennifer Sipes,

Brotherhood is about a fraternity initiation gone wrong. A mistake happens along the lines and things turn serious. In essence this film is a downward spiral of 70 mins.
At first I found myself thinking, “oh, this is another film where just driven forward by situations which could be resolved very quickly if the person would only just stop being an a moral idiot.” It is exactly that, but by the end I came to an almost calm and acceptance that the person was just an idiot and therefore justified the events. Apparently this movie made me go through the stages of grief.

• Denial (Is this really happening?)
• Anger (oh this is just stupid?)
• Bargaining (ok if I stick with it something will happen to justify it..)
• Depression (I don’t care anymore)
• Acceptance (I’m ready for whatever comes)

This can also pretty much sum up the film’s structure. From what I gather from Brotherhood people go through a lot of shit, essentially to become a part of an extend family or community. It’s almost a step up some form of social ladder. Except in Brotherhood there isn’t really any great reasoning to why these people want to join this certain fraternity apart from them owning a house & having parties. The leader of this group Frank (Jon Foster) is just a downright arrogant idiot, at some point there is a speech about being a leader towards the  main character that is simply from leftfield.
It does get a bit ridiculous stacked towards the middle in an almost slapstick turn of events. I wasn’t sure whether it was intentionally trying to be funny or not.

The pacing continues constantly taking one step forward & then two steps back. Just when you think there is one rational thinking person… Nope, turns out there is a sudden change of heart, lapse of rational, due to some onus of belonging to this fraternity. A moment where the cycle of events could actually conclude a character decides to add another couple of minutes to the films running time.
It does bring up some nice themes of friendship vs. social relationships in which Adam , (Trevor Mogan) the lead, has to pretty much pick a side with moral consequence that added some edge. For me Adam acted as an anchor who brought the series of stupid events some gravitas and grounded it in some reality.
A lot is a messy farce but it actually felt redeemed by the ending, which was as if the film itself was owning up to how over the top these situations were and to be fair it was an OK film.

Movie Rating: 2.5/5

first posted at Escape Buttons Dexter’s very own blog