Brotherhood
Brotherhood
R | 13 March 2010 (USA)
Brotherhood Trailers

Adam Buckley finds himself in the middle of a convenience store robbery during his last night as a pledge for a college fraternity. When the initiation ritual goes horribly wrong, and every move proves disastrous, Adam is forced to confront a new challenge all together, and he has to take a stand.

Reviews
loyolite

This is a very nicely done movie, which is very engaging, fast and interesting. It keeps you watching throughout the movie. While some things are predictable , many are not. I don't understand how come the rating is just around 6. It's much better than most movies you see nowadays. It's about a bunch of kids going through the induction process to get into a frat. The movie begins with one prank, which goes way off. It gets them into trouble ,and more trouble and more trouble. The best part about this movie is the way it ends. I had absolutely no idea that this is what was going to happen ! Do watch it , it's a good movie.

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Sainte-Lucifer

There may be spoilers, but the movie still sucks.I don't really know where to begin because I refuse to normally write a review. This movie is beyond stupid. First, we have a group of frat guys hazing the pledges, led by Frank, a dimwit of a fellow who does absolutely everything wrong just because. The pledges are told they must commit a convenience store robbery to become members, but that by doing so does not grant them the opportunity in the fraternity. So essentially, they are asked to commit a felony for no reason other than to satisfy the twisted desires of adolescents.If you can manage, by some miraculous feat, to actually look past how stupid this sounds then wait until it really gets going. Oh, just to be sure, the acting isn't half bad, if you consider yelling at everyone throughout the entire film acting. What I don't understand is why they would let their friend sit on his death bed while they convened to figure a way out of the mess. If my friend was shot in a fake robbery I would immediately take him to the hospital, without hesitation. How stupid can someone be? I have been shot before, right in the bladder, so I can presume to appreciate the importance of quick medical attention.The idea for the movie was alright, I just wish the frat guys had some common sense, I honestly don't understand how they are even in college, or how they made it out of high school. Common sense would have saved them all a lot of trouble, but they were so naive and gullible in their own beliefs and lack of morals that they deceived themselves throughout the whole film. I must say it was funny to watch how things unfolded, but I kept reading my book and turning away from my laptop because it is just one ludicrous decision after another, over and over.The movie has to be a joke to my intelligence because this is nowhere near good, nowhere near worthwhile. It is a waste of time and that is what I used it for, to kill time since I was unable to sleep. If you are in the same spot as I saw myself there are much better films out there that are available to waste some time with. Dragonball Evolution was better than this.

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johnnyboyz

Brotherhood is an astute; compelling; stripped down piece looking at the allure of one's need to feel superior as well as the periodic need for young men to feed their own egotisms. When a character in the film has been shot, and is taken to somebody's student accommodation so as to be treated, one of the tenants demands an onlooker heavily involved in the situation urgently do something – demands he rapidly rejects out of not wanting to look small; inferior, nor as if he takes orders, whilst in front of a handful of first-year kids he desires to look authoritarian in front of. Never mind all the alcohol, or periodic use of casual drugs if that is the case; these kids are near to the point of sheer madness and danger through being high on testosterone and arrogance. Young American filmmaker Will Canon's debut feature is a breath of fresh air; a ruby amidst the rough of the American independent scene of oft snow-set quirksome squalor and adult subject matter being distilled through a filter of mainstreamisation. Here is a film with a fair number of robbery sequences; characters charging around an intimate urban locale wielding guns as well as young men verbally clashing with one another over heated issues - and yet in spite of this, is actually about something: neither manifesting into an exploitative crime film nor descending into the doldrums of being a lecturous chore.The film follows that of Adam, a fresher (or freshman in the set-world of America) played by Trevor Morgan, whose on the cusp of starting at a university and must undergo an immediate process in these, the dying embers of summer before the academic year begins, that'll see him inducted into the realms of a domestic fraternity. In spite of this, the film is essentially the process Adam is inclined to go through so as to reject the egotistical driven schooling-set world of showmanship; peer-pressure and the proving of one's masculinity: drinking a lot of booze and coming into possession of a firearm, albeit on separate occasions, does not make one a "man". When we begin, we begin in the confines of a van doing the rounds at a number of convenience stores; convenience stores which it would appear are being held up by a number of freshmen whose inauguration is being undertaken. But it is a sham, and where the frat-leader Frank's (Foster) excessive use of profanity in both questioning and challenging that of the other's masculinity has us question the competence of the screenwriter/director in their ability to broaden dialogue, we are swiftly put in our place thereafter when it's revealed the whole thing is a scare mongering act for the others yet to 'rob' somewhere.Disaster strikes when one of the fraternity hopefuls does indeed hold up a store, when the collecting of a bag of money from an insider already there is what should have happened. In waiting outside the incorrect store, a fraternity member dooms Kevin (Taylor-Pucci) to being the hapless kid shot by a clerk, an event which kicks off all manner of strife for those involved and causes some serious headaches for these people early on in their scholarly life before term has even begun. In the panic, Kevin is taken the a proverbial fraternity headquarters; the large party unfolding cut short when a spiteful, narcissistic, evil individual suddenly finds himself hosting a GSW victim after having previously been limited to meticulously organising ill-judged pranks on that of people not wanting to drink the amounts of alcohol forced upon them and not wanting to have an act of sex go wrong which has been wholly planned to.In feeding off an approach to its thesis more broadly reminiscent of Scorsese's After Hours or a vastly underrated crime thriller from a few years ago in the form of Running Scared, the film plunges its characters into a causality driven Hell where the rejection of proper authorities as well as professional medical attention forces those involved through a series of bleak night-set altercations and interactions, all the while our anchor in Adam gluing proceedings as this first-year kid daring to challenging the patriarchy. Canon does a great job in moving things along, allowing the bluntness of the opening sequences on how the fraternity operate dissolve into this unglamorous procession of lies and amorality wholly brought about by their own egomaniacal agenda; using the item of the individual bleeding to death as a wonderful device to keep tensions and deadlines heightened.In feeding off the above approaches, the piece harks back to an era of twenty-or-so years ago when films such as Reservoir Dogs dominated the independent crime scene. Here, Kevin's blood soaked person held up in a dingy locale as those refusing to back down from one another over varying issues calls to mind that of Keitel's, Buscemi's and Penn's respective bickering as Roth lied spread eagle in the aforementioned example; while the presence of Mike (Escarpeta), the young clerk at the store, echoes that of a certain Marvin Nash as we follow his exasperated arrival in earnest via the rear of somebody's car, brought closer to the mayhem and hit upon by the crew when it's revealed he may prove a threat. Like Tarantino, Canon has made a film with a quaint ability to escalate issues and disagreements out of one routine catalyst; a thousand diamond store robberies have happened in a thousand films, likewise with a shooting that was never meant to have been, but the aftermath and the heightened tension born out of it as varying elements struggle for total control are what drives our growing interest and trepidation in both examples. Where not as good, and with the distinct sense of it being a debut feature from a filmmaker with-room-to-grow, Brotherhood more than fits the bill for what it is, in what is a gratifying observation on where the sorts of behaviour therein has one arrive.

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everyfilmin2011

So, with limited preparation (I had no idea what the film was about) I set about this American fraternity thriller. And, I have to say, it wasn't bad at all. The opening scenes are in the back of a van where three teenagers are being yelled at by one of their peers who then charges off, gun in hand, claiming he is going to rob a convenience store. He reappears seconds later to tell the trio they have to follow suit if they are to be accepted into a sought-after university fraternity. It quickly transpires that the initiation ceremony is a fake and, before each individual gets to the door of their respective stores, they are stopped by a fellow frat man who gives them the cash they have been instructed to rob, to make it look as if they have been successful. Unfortunately, he is not there when the last of the three , Kevin, (Lou Taylor Pucci) goes off to do his robbery and, therefore, Kevin tries to carry it out. However, things start to unravel pretty quickly. Kevin is shot in the shoulder by the shop assistant who refuses to believe he is not being properly held up until the concept is beaten into him by Kevin's friend Adam (Trevor Morgan) and Frank (Jon Foster), the teenager who had been giving the dummy instructions on the hold-up. Frank, fearing that the police would not understand the hold-up had been a prank, insists that Kevin, despite bleeding heavily is taken back to the frat house and the emergency services are not called. This begins a sequence of dramatic events in which just about everything transpires against a successful outcome for the group. All of the time, Adam is fearing for Kevin's life and is desperately pleading with Frank to take him to hospital. As sparring takes places over the decision, the dynamics of power and peer pressure are put acutely under the microscope of director Will Canon. Canon's movie is low budget but he builds up tension and develops characters well and, in less than 80 minutes, ratchets up considerable tension.

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