Brotherhood

What Texan filmmaker Will Canon’s breathless ‘calling card’ movie lacks in credibility, it tries to make up for with sheer reckless energy. Starting in mid-flow, as the alpha males of a college fraternity bully a group of pledges into staging shop robberies, it majors in testosterone-fuelled action and shouty dialogue. Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Joe Carnahan are influences, but as the initiation prank spins dangerously out of control, there are also echoes of Doug Liman’s underrated ‘Go’.

The director’s short film ‘Roslyn’ was the springboard for this over-stretched feature, which despite a running time of less than 70 minutes (minus the credits), still outstays its welcome. Once the evening’s disastrous chain of events has been set in motion – by the shooting of reluctant robber Kevin (Lou Taylor Pucci), the refusal of fraternity leader Frank (Jon Foster) to take him to hospital and callow pledge Adam’s crisis of conscience – the plot accelerates in a series of fits and starts, with each twist less credible than the last. Coincidence is piled upon contrivance, as Canon loses sight of the film’s emotional core: the intense psychological power struggle between the ‘hazing’ seniors and the wannabe pledges.

Although beautifully shot, ‘Brotherhood’ would have benefited greatly from some of Tarantino’s cadenced dialogue, Rodriguez’s tongue-in-cheek humour or Carnahan’s visceral nihilism.
So for all its nods to producer Roger Corman’s ’70s exploitation movies, this patchy first feature has an air of puppy dog naiveté.