Brothers Review

I went to see this movie with a friend and we knew it was going to be bad going in, but oh, my goodness the first half is awful. People have talked about Siddarth and Jackie Schroff's performances, but I put most of the blame at the feet of the director and the editor. The first half, setting up the dramatic conflict, is so SLOW. Scenes that could take a minute take five. Jackie Schroff stumbles around taking forever to get across the point that he a drunk schmuck. I didn't think Siddarth was that bad -- but he sure wasn't given many lines to work with.

The fight scenes were effective in the second half -- mostly because there is no more perfect actor to play a mixed martial arts fighter in Bollywood than Akshay Kumar. None. But the editing -- again!! Between the semi-final fights and the final battle between the brothers there is not one single millisecond of breather, or a down time emotional beat. WTF? This is Bollywood, and you lollygagged through the first half to make this a three hour movie, and you can't give even one MINUTE for the audience to take a breath and give us a a second to let the impact sink in? And the ending could have had more emotional punch, too.

I haven't seen Warrior, the original movie with Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte on which Brothers is based, so I can't speak to what changes this script made. I have heard however that in Warrior you don't know who to root for in the final fight. In this movie, there is no question you want Akshay to get the money for his kid's treatment. The reason the brothers aren't speaking and battling is weak, and we don't really understand Monty (Siddarth's) motivation.

The two women in the film are excellent however. Jacqueline Fernandez I'm not sure I've seen before, and she was very good as Akshay's wife. I bow down to Shefali Shetty, who plays Jackie Shroff's wife and the boys' mother. She commands the screen in every scene she is in and packs an emotional punch -- just as she did in Dil Didakhne Do. She is just SO good. I whispered to my friend that she was 1000 times better than this movie.

It's hard to believe this is the same director that gave us Agneepath. What happened with this film? It would seem to be tailor made for Bollywood melodrama. Did Lionsgate interfere too much? Were there too many cooks in the kitchen? All the energy I could see was put into making the fight scenes great -- and they were, and much more realistic than much of what we see in Indian films. But you need to work on the story and pacing, too, guys!