‘Brothers’ fails to bond thanks to gloomy gangster plot

MOVIE REVIEW

“BROTHERS BY BLOOD”

Rated R. On VOD and digital platforms.

Grade: B-

A bleak, doom-laden gangster film based on the 1991 Philadelphia-set novel “Brotherly Love” by Pete Dexter, “Brothers By Blood,” aka “The Sound of Philadelphia,” has a tough time developing its identity, if not its title. The film’s lead actors– Mattias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman– are Belgian and Swedish, respectively, and they are here cast as Philadelphia-born, Irish-American first cousins Peter and Michael Flood. The action starts inauspiciously on a rooftop with a discuss running the roofers union and an unclean anecdote about a check out to a proctologist that ends with Peter jumping off a roofing system (I chose him in spirit). This opening did not give me much self-confidence in how it would all end.

It ends up the Irish mob typically runs the roof business in Philly. However the Italians are attempting to horn in and want a cut. Go or agree to the mattresses? We likewise find out that ne’er-do-well Jimmy (Paul Schneider), the owner of a regional bar-restaurant, has actually borrowed greatly from Michael, who is far more dangerous than his more even-tempered cousin Peter.

The story is interwoven with flashbacks, sometimes not very clear, featuring the young Peter (Nicholas Crovetti, “Big Little Lies”) and his emotionally unstable father (a great Ryan Phillippe). In these scenes, Peter’s sibling is struck by a neighbor’s automobile and eliminated. His mom is devoted to an asylum, and his daddy descends into a pit of depression and rage. A tattered American flag flies in front of the family’s modest triple-decker.

In the mix is Jimmy’s sis Grace (a criminally underutilized Maika Monroe), who shows up and triggers a love with Peter, although it is so low-key it barely has a pulse.

A lesson lost on director and co-writer Frenchman Jeremie Guez is that gangsters, specifically the kids, like to have a good time. They are the world’s real-life lost boys, who enjoy making mischief, some of it exceptionally violent. Francis Coppola, Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese and David Chase understood this to be real, and it gives their bad kids their devilish appeal. Without it, Peter and Michael are a couple of mopes.

Michael buys an $80K race horse, not to cut off its head and frighten a Hollywood manufacturer, but to fly into a rage when it inexplicably breaks a leg and needs to be put down. Peter, for his part, spends his spare time at Carlos’ Boxing Gym, grimly pounding the huge bag. The owner has a young protegee Michael has his wicked eye on. A fridge with a dent left when Peter’s dad smashed his head into it resembles a significant appliance and family heirloom all in one. There is a lot vomiting, coughing and hacking that I desired to call an ambulance.

By the time Peter and Grace get around finally to slipping into bed together, they are dressed for a funeral they participated in. Someone summon the paradox authorities.

(“Brothers by Blood” includes blasphemy, violence, sexually suggestive material and substance abuse.)