Mark Reviews Movies: BROTHERS BY BLOOD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 21, 2021

Peter (Matthias Schoenaerts) lives alone in the Philadelphia house where he spent the first part of his life. In general, there'd be nothing too strange about this situation. There's comfort in the familiar and peace in that comfort. Through a series of flashbacks, scattered throughout Brothers by Blood, we learn, though, that there is no comfort or peace in this place.

Writer/director Jérémie Guez's film is, at its foundation, a fairly familiar gangster story, about the business of crime, a battle over control of turf and enterprise, and familial ties that simultaneously simplify (because, in theory, you at least know someone is on your side) and complicate (because, at some point, the business is going to become personal) all of this dirty business. What sets this particular story, adapted from the novel Brotherly Love by Pete Dexter, apart, though, is Guez's focus on these characters, the piece's mood, and a shadowy, claustrophobic sense of inevitable doom, instead of concerns of convoluted plot or empty action.

The story here is simple and, yes, even predictable, but that's not the film's primary aim. Instead, it's about the ghosts of the past and the loneliness of the present.

Peter is a haunted man, living in a haunted place. He has only known loss and grief, and that has left him lost in his grieving. As a child, he watched as his sister ran out into the street, only to be struck and killed by a car that either didn't or couldn't slow down. That was just the start of proceeding and connected tragedies, which a boy of his age had neither control over nor understanding.

As a man, the actual cousin and adopted brother of Irish mob boss Michael (Joel Kinnaman), Peter still has no control and hasn't quite been able to understand how and why all of the events of his childhood came to pass. What he does know, though, is that Michael is in charge. Michael calls the shots. Michael determines the business, decides who gets work, and chooses who dies. Peter can offer advice, but whether or not his cousin decides to listen to it is a matter entirely left to Michael.

Most of what we would consider to be the plot of a story such as this one plays out in the background, off-screen, or through dialogue—suggestive or direct. The local Italian mob has started a violent campaign against Michael's gang. Michael insists their rivals are trying to take over control of certain business interests.

While negotiating with a politician, trying to make up for his corrupt hiring practices in government by exploiting the hiring practices of Michael's corrupt hold on the unions, Peter learns that one of the crew's heads has been killed. Michael doesn't know who ordered the hit, but he's ready to go to war, even without that vital piece of information. Peter tries to convince him to stay calm, to learn more, and, when it becomes clear that it's the Italian mob behind this and another killing, to try to negotiate a truce that will stop any future violence. Instead, Michael rallies an army of street soldiers to kill any Italian gangster they can find.

These details, of course, would the primary and perhaps sole concern of an ordinary movie with this premise. We'd watch Michael plan. Peter might only be a supporting player—the calm voice of reason to be betrayed by his peace proposals or to fall in line when he finally loses something or someone worth anything to him. There might be a twist or two, and there certainly would be plenty of violence—shootouts and fights and chases and maybe explosions.

What's surprising about Guez's film is how quiet it is. The conversations here are firm but hushed, because these characters know they don't need to yell to make a point or a threat. Violence happens, of course, but it is quick and anticlimactic or simply occurs off-screen. A friend (played by Paul Schneider) of the cousins has taken a loan from Michael to open a restaurant, and while we can anticipate what will happen from this arrangement, there's a strange, off-kilter absence of tension from this subplot.

Peter knows the friend can't be convinced to leave his friendship to Michael out of the equation. When things do go wrong, the friend is hyper-focused on the fate of his dogs, instead of what consequences might befall him. When that story ends, the result is exactly as Peter knew it could only be: inevitable and worthy of pity.

It's the silence that stands out here, as Peter sits around his house, the location of such pain and mourning and things left unspoken or spoken around. After his sister's death, Peter recalls in one of those flashbacks, his father (played by Ryan Phillippe), the brother of the Irish mob boss at the time, realized his daughter's death would go unpunished, unavenged, and unanswered. He banged his head into the refrigerator door, and in the present, the dent from that act of helpless rage remains for Peter to see. The anger eventually got the father somewhere, but the son is trapped within and by the consequences of that act.

Brothers by Blood is a gangster story, not portrayed for action or a complex plot within a large scope, but played at an intimate level, in a low tone and a minor key. It's a story about the atmosphere of loss and isolation, of consequences piling up across generations, and of the feeling of helplessness against the inevitable. From something common and predictable, Guez has crafted a simple but effective mood piece.

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