John Singleton gets down in the Motor City
By K. Curtis Lyle
For the St. Louis American
When I was twelve years old, a friend informed me that his daddy and his uncle were leaving L.A. for Detroit. They were making this 2,500 mile trek in order to pick up a new Buick Electra 225. In the parlance of the day, this car was a “deuce and a quarter.” In my neighborhood, your deuce and a quarter was your ace in the hole. It gave you economic prestige among your boyz and social credibility with girlfriends, who existed mostly in your dreams.
Detroit, in the late fifties, was like Los Angeles, Oakland, Houston, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, St. Louis and Philadelphia: a enclave of the black working class, where dreams were nurtured and young bodies and minds were fiercely protected. The motor city, however, had two almost spiritual qualities that lifted it above its urban brethren and gave it mythic status.
One: It was the home of General Motors, the largest corporation in the world. It was here that the chariots of my youth were magically constructed. Two: It was where the cathedral called Motown created the soundtrack of the time, a kind of hybrid mystery religion made up of snatches of rhythm and blues, gospel, civil rights aspirations, youthful naivete and pure joy.
John Singleton has been arguably the most consistent filmic chronicler of black youth and the wellsprings of its creativity. His epochal Boyz In The Hood laid the foundation for the most serious look into what has come to be viewed as a black male pathology and this same class’ refusal to be defined by anyone other than themselves. Poetic Justice, Higher Learning, Rosewood (a film so disturbing it’s hard to watch twice), Shaft and Baby Boy expanded on the original themes of social pathology vs. personal power by adding racial animus, creativity and forgiveness to this heady thematic mix.
Now comes Four Brothers. This film is the closing of a sacred circle. In the eighties, Motown pulled up stakes in Detroit and moved its operation to L.A. In setting Four Brothers in Detroit, Singleton has returned the favor and, in a sense, recreated a 21st century version of the holy city of my youth.
That city is beaten up now. It’s hurt. Marvin Gaye’s dark vision of Detroit is now in full play. The inner city is so blue that it rests on a black lake. Legendary novelist Donald Goines’ even darker vision of Detroit, in Singleton’s hands, has suffered the same fate as the Titanic: It has sunk to the bottom of a murky urban sea. Crime, political corruption and police brutality dominate any spark of goodness. This is where Singleton begins his film.
Four brothers, two black and two white, return to the city to bury their mother. The film opens with what appears to be her random murder in a stereotypical ghetto grocery store stick-up gone bad. However, nothing here is what it appears to be.
The four brothers are not blood, but former wards of the murdered woman, Evelyn Mercer (Fionnula Flanagan). As the Marvin Gaye anthem “Trouble Man” plays, we meet the Mercer brothers, and they are troubled. White Bobby (Mark Wahlberg) is a hothead with a big Oldsmobile 442, and the real leader of the pack. Black Angel (Tryese) is a big handsome lug, who rivals Bobby in charisma and has a serious streak of the cockhound. White Jack (Garrett Hedlund) is sweet as a peach, but not too bright. Black Jeremiah (Andre 3000 of Outkast fame) is the success story, and therefore likely to have a little less heart than the rest.
Without giving the story away, we can say that the heart of the film is the investigation the brothers make into their mother’s murder and the mayhem they cause along the way. Their image of racial unity can only work, I think, in the grittiness of a place like contemporary Detroit. Race is a dilemma that has already been dealt with by these young men through shared trial and tribulation. They’ve been to war and never been allowed to return home, so their bond is unbreakable. They also have the same mama, if not in blood, then certainly in spirit.
The film has the strange effect of making the squalor of the ghetto a unifying force, because everyone is trying to get up and out. This theme also gives the film its true complexity.
Writers David Elliot and Paul Lovett make everything snap and crackle linguistically. The woofin’ and jone’n between the bothers is deliciously perverse and makes the constant use of profanity the very hip language it was originally meant to be.
I must say, however, that the magnificent talents of Terrence Howard are wasted in this film. His throwaway role as the lead detective, Lt. Green, hurt my feelings.
Conversely, the magnificent British Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor comes through almost as powerfully as he did in 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things. As the villain of this piece, he is as villainous as it gets. Andre 3000 makes his first mark as a fine actor. He trumps the other brothers through generosity, vision and a perpetual optimism that gives the film a real and permanent tone. He’ll do as well on the screen as he’s done at the mic. That says a whole lot.
