Dir. Will Canon , US , 2010, 76 mins
Cast: Jon Foster, Trevor Morgan, Lou Taylor Pucci, Arlen Escarpeta
Review by Mark Byrnes
Loyalty, it has been said, is the cornerstone of friendship. For one group of college freshmen the fallout from a botched robbery will test each other’s loyalty in the thriller, Brotherhood .
Adam Buckley (Trevor Morgan) is one night away from joining the college fraternity Sigma Zeta Chi. He and each of the other pledges have to rob a convenience store, thereby proving their loyalty to the group’s leader Frank (Jon Foster). But when one of the pledges Kevin (Lou Taylor Pucci) is accidentally shot during the hold-up, events begin to spiral out of control and Adam finds that he must choose between saving the life of his friend or pledging loyalty to his new brotherhood.
Brotherhood began life as a short film, and this full-length version marks director Canon’s feature debut. Despite modest means, Canon has fashioned an entertaining and fairly polished film. Knowing the importance of a good opening, Canon throws the audience right in with a group of young men blindfolded in the back of a van, unaware of what lies ahead of them. This makes for a tense beginning, which unfortunately the remainder of the film fails to live up to.
Suspension of disbelief is essential for any film to work. But one of Brotherhood’s flaws is that Canon tries to maintain the tension of the opening scenes throughout without pausing for the audience to breathe. This means the cast spend most of the film either overacting or swearing at each other while loud rock music pumps over the soundtrack. As one after another obstacle is placed in the way of Adam’s attempts to save Kevin’s life, it becomes harder to believe in what is happening on-screen.
Mike (Arlen Escarpeta), a convenience store clerk who becomes unwittingly drawn into the aftermath of the shooting, is one of the film’s stronger characters and his scenes with Adam give the film dramatic credibility. Mike’s role as an outsider, particularly his African-American ethnicity, creates tension and violence within the fraternity group, especially from one outwardly racist member of the brotherhood. This interestingly highlights a possible unsavoury truth – that in reality there is a reason why higher education affiliated social groups do not have an open door membership policy.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the director does have the potential to be a successful genre filmmaker in the future and indeed Brotherhood could be seen almost as a calling card to the studio execs in Hollywood. Canon is well able to handle an action scene and from his own script has delivered a story, which despite its flaws is an entertaining one with a surprising sting in its tail.
