Four Brothers

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Four Brothers works as an urban thriller, if not precisely as a model of logic.

USA Today Mike Clark

Preposterous yet solidly entertaining.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If you can overcome the graphic nature of its casual violence, it is a lot of fun. The banter among the brothers is well-written and has a genuine fraternal feel to it. And the chases and shootouts have a fresh malevolence to them.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Wahlberg, whose Bobby is the kind of guy who enters a room gun first, swinging a can of a gasoline, is the glue that holds everything together; he's perfectly cast and has never given a more persuasive performance.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Gripping: Even when it wobbles off-track, it has some juice to it.

Variety Joe Leydon

With equal measures of rock-the-house vigor and in-your-face attitude, Four Brothers proves usually potent and consistently enjoyable as an old school approach to what might best be described as the urban-Western genre of slam-bang, balls-out action-revenger.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

It's a finely tuned Motor City engine: The action, including a nighttime car chase through a blinding snowstorm, is fast, brutal and efficient; the Motown soundtrack never cuts out; and as a gangster called Sweet, the British-Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor gives an electrifying performance.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Proficiently made trash.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Easily the best 1975 B-movie made in 2005, Four Brothers is a raucously entertaining vigilante film.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

What holds us are the actors, including Terrence Howard as a cop who grew up with the brothers.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

True, John Ford and John Wayne did this stuff a lot better back in the day, but they're not around anymore. John Singleton is, and it's nice to see someone caring enough to keep the tradition alive.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A faux-low-budget revenge thriller, pure and simple. There's nothing special about it, and that's what's refreshing.

Empire Nick De Semlyen

Heavy-handed in places and bad news for the Detroit Tourist Commission, this is still a slick, fun ensemble piece and a step back in the right direction for Singleton.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

It’s more than adequate as an old school action movie slightly updated for modern audiences.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A typically energetic urban action melodrama, offering car chases, beatings, murders, a dog mauling, attempted arson, frequent double-crosses and pitched street battles worthy of Fallouja.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The casting is hit-and-miss. OutKast's Benjamin and "Troy's" Hedlund are weak, but Gibson is very appealing and the movie powers along on a strong lead performance by Wahlberg, who has never seemed more confident, commanding or scruffily charismatic.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Four Brothers immediately joins the Good Idea, Bad Execution club. Hardly anyone seems to care about its believability - not director John Singleton, writers David Elliott and Paul Lovett or some lackadaisical actors.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

The movie's not great, but Mom might like it.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

For all its well-drawn lines between good and evil, Four Brothers is ultimately passive entertainment.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

If you take any of this seriously, you are not going to enjoy the movie very much. But as an absurd riff on baadasssss gangsta movies, Four Brothers has an undeniable visceral kick.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

What results is unremarkably schizophrenic--half gritty sojourn into the inner-city furnace, half Hollywood brain death.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

More action directors should include scenes such as the Mercers' extended Thanksgiving dinner, which fleshes out the bond between the brothers without using too many words.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

This is the kind of scrappy Seventies-throwback B-movie that fits the bill when you desperately need to see regular-seeming, occasionally inept people rise up against our corrupt criminal oppressors and cudgel them with pool cues and bits of blasted-off brick.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Loud, stupid, unrealistic, overdone, without a thought in its ugly little head and kind of enjoyable.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Atmospheric, propulsive and ultimately preposterous melodrama.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Singleton's sloppiest, laziest movie to date, springing to life in fits and starts, risibly mawkish and occasionally gripping, and often feeling like it was made up on the set.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson

The director's approach is far too ham-fisted and erratic to bring Four Brothers up to the level of enjoyable trash -- it's too crummy to earn that distinction.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Because the script, riddled with verbal ugliness by David Elliot and Paul Lovett, sends the movie to a series of arbitrary nowheres, the final showdown for the Mercer boys and their enemies is just as meaningless and sense-deadening.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Four Brothers regresses into gallows comedy, rampant misogyny, and one preposterous Hollywood action setpiece after another.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A career low for Mark Wahlberg and director John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood), this ridiculous mean-streets adventure starts out like a Hell's Kitchen melodrama from the 30s and eventually spins off into a series of gunfights, beat downs, and trite Motown numbers.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Four Brothers? Ringling Brothers is more like it, because John Singleton's latest stinks like something the elephants left behind. It's not clear what the film is trying to do, but it seems safe to guess that it's doing it wrong.