Movie Review: 'Brothers by Blood'

Brothers by Blood is yet another in a long line of dreary, mopey crime movies. Not that crime movies should be sunny by any stretch. Rather, I just feel as if I suffer more of these dreary, sad, gray, grimy crime movies year after year after year and no one making them ever seems to find a way to liven up the proceedings. Brothers by Blood has a funereal pace that is the exact opposite of lively.

Matthias Schoenhaerts stars in Brothers by Blood as Peter, a gloomy thug in the employ of his sociopath cousin, Michael, though everyone assumes they are brothers. That’s because Peter and Michael grew up together. Michael’s father brought Peter to live with them after Peter’s dad, played in flashback by Ryan Phillippe, was murdered by the same mob that employed Michael’s dad.

In flashbacks we see young Peter, about 8 or 9 years old. He and his sister are playing in the street when Peter’s sister is struck by a car and killed. Peter’s father swears revenge but he’s advised not to do anything because the man who did it is a crooked cop, owned by the mob. Further flashbacks will build toward Peter’s dad being killed offscreen and Peter being taken to live with Michael and thus provided with some motivation for not exactly being loyal to his cousin.

Michael has recently become more aggressive towards business interests that conflict with local Italian mobsters. Peter has counselled his cousin to take it easy and work toward peace but Michael appears intent on a war. Peter is caught in the middle, wanting to protect Michael and keep peace but also growing weary of Michael’s ever twisting moods which have become more violent.

When Michael is shot and nearly killed outside of a friend’s restaurant, Michael sets about burning every bridge, starting with the friend who owned the restaurant, Jimmy played by Paul Schrader. Michael is unaware that Peter has started to see Jimmy’s little sister, Grace (Maika Monroe) and that she’s told Peter how much of a squeeze that Michael is putting on Jimmy even after the restaurant has burned down and Jimmy is seemingly of no use to anyone.

That’s a reasonable sketch of what is at play in Brothers by Blood and believe me when I tell you that it reads a little more interesting than the movie actually is. The biggest issue is Schoenhaerts who mistakes moping around for acting. I understand Peter is a rather miserable man in his current state but Schoenhaerts plays this character as if he’d rather be anywhere else than in a movie and that’s the best approach to portraying a character.

In my opinion, Hollywood really missed something in Joel Kinnaman. By trying to make Kinnaman a leading man in Robocop or a second lead in Suicide Squad, they’ve missed what make him such an interesting actor. Kinnaman has a livewire energy and a unique look that is well suited to playing supporting characters in cop movies or gangster dramas. He’s too unique for a role as boringly written as Michael.

The movie seemingly has a rope around Michael that keeps Kinnaman from achieving what he appears capable of, a wild eyed villain on the edge. He’s got charisma, he has a striking presence but he needs a good director and far better written role to allow those elements to step forward. Kept mostly in the shadows of Brothers by Blood and under the glum glower of Schoenhaerts’ lead performance, Kinnaman is like a racehorse being choked by the reigns.

Brothers by Blood is dreary, gray and repetitive to an almost comic degree. Peter walks into a place, someone warns Peter that Michael is out of control, he promises to try and do something and leaves. Lather, rinse, repeat. If not that scene, then it’s Peter watching Michael be a jerk to people, asking him to stop being a jerk to people and then leaving after Michael continues to be a jerk. Repeat these scenes ad infinitum and you have Brothers by Blood.

A character trait the movie assigns to Peter is a desire to jump from heights. He opens the movie, very first scene, jumping off a mid-sized building and landing on an apparently quite soft pile of dirt. Later, this comes back when we see young Peter perform the same action from a second story window. This does well to establish a grim tone but Peter is not otherwise depressed or suicidal so what this added to the movie, I have no idea, other than establishing Peter’s gloomy nature that hovers oppressively like a black cloud over the whole movie.