An orangutan that knows sign language is somehow connected to digging up a corpse stuffed with emeralds. Trust me, I’m just as confused as you are.
“Brothers,” released on Oct. 10 in select theaters and re-released on Prime Video on Oct. 17, follows the confusing plotline of twin brothers Jady and Moke Munger as they carry out a heist. The movie is labeled as an action-comedy — but I must have missed the action and humor between the lame attempts to make me laugh and cringe action scenes like a shootout in a shopping mall.
The basis of the movie is that Jady, played by Peter Dinklage, is released from prison after a shady deal with Officer Farful, the antagonist who ends up chasing the brothers around threatening them. Seems intriguing, I know, but it wasn’t revealed until after the first 20 mind-numbingly boring minutes of the movie.
The first 20 minutes laid out the classic cliche background for crime movie protagonists — Jady and Moke, played by Josh Brolin, get their criminal tendencies from their family who abandoned them for money and crime when they were young. You think you haven’t seen it before? Try watching any of the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise or literally any crime movie ever.
What kind of names are Jady and Moke anyways? Last time I checked, just giving the characters stupid names doesn’t qualify as comedy.
And don’t worry, the cliches don’t stop there.
Jady approached his brother about helping him with the crime post-release, but “oh no he’s changed and is a better person now”. But get this — Moke ends up joining his brother to “save Jady’s life”. Oh, and they run into their long-lost mother, played by Glenn Close, on the way.
These seemingly big revelations in the movie still didn’t make the movie interesting. The whole point of action movies is to keep you on the edge of your seat, not fighting the urge to play Block Blast on your phone.
Despite my negative opinion of the movie, Dinklage, known for his roles in “Game of Thrones” and “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” did a fantastic job as an actor, outshining some of the other characters. The plot just didn’t do him justice.
The writers must’ve realized halfway through the script that their “comedy movie” wasn’t comedic at all, because random ad-libs like a karaoke-bar montage and the aforementioned orangutan felt like last-minute additions written in crayon.
I will give them credit though, because Samuel the orangutan shocked me out of my daze of boredom and confusion.
Throughout the twins’ adventure — with primates and dance-offs — the shady police officer was following the brothers. Farful’s chaotic and unpredictable personality seems to be based on the Joker. But, like the rest of the movie, they take it too far.
Farful delivers the classic cackles and antagonizing remarks from normal cliche villains at an annoying, ear-bleeding scream. No matter how much I turned the volume down, I still wanted to throw the remote at his face. That’s how bad it was.
And the emeralds that Farful wanted so badly? They were in the stomach of Jady and Moke’s mom’s ex-boyfriend’s dead body buried 30 years before that on a golf course.
Honestly, the dead body scene is the best and most true to the action-comedy title. I actually giggled when the boys were driving away from angry golfers in a bulldozer with the cadaver hanging out of the vehicle.
Unless you’re a diehard Peter Dinklage fan and just have to see this movie because he’s in it, I strongly, strongly suggest you pass this one over when scrolling through Prime Video.
Related
Leave a Reply