Maybe it’s my love of westerns that made me fall so hard
for John Singleton’s Four Brothers,
his 2005 Detroit-set revenge film and his best work since Boyz
N the Hood. I didn’t realize it then, or even the second time I watched
it, that it’s essentially a modern urban western. The lawlessness of the open
land and small towns has been replaced by the gutted and run down Motor City.
Instead of some evil landowner there’s a crime boss (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor
early in his Hollywood career and long before his star turn in 12
Years a Slave). Replacing the heroic gunslinger is a criminal and his
three brothers, in town for their mother Evelyn’s (Fionnula Flanagan) funeral
and to exact revenge for her murder in what appears to be a convenience store
robbery. Many of the western tropes are there. There are gunfights. There are
shots establishing the landscape, in this cast derelict buildings and
snow-swept (as opposed to wind) open spaces of frozen lakes.
