DETROIT SINNERS

REVIEWED - FOUR BROTHERSJohn Singleton is to be congratulated on coming up with a novel - and potentially intriguing - amalgam of genres here. Taking his story from Henry Hathaway's The Sons of Katie Elder and cutting it to the theme tune from Trouble Man, the director of Boyz N the Hood encourages us to ponder how contentedly the western might get on with the blaxploitation flick

Well, the atmosphere and texture of Four Brothers - filmed in a steel-grey Detroit, where every collar is blue - are effective enough. Singleton allows his talented cast to exchange both pleasantries and gunfire without feeling the need to point out the happy variety of races about the place. If he had found a way around the noxious sentimentality of the story's first chapter and the boring contrivance of its denouement, then we might have genuine grounds for celebration. As things stand, we are presented with a great deal of earthy ambience hanging around nothing much worth looking at.

Four Brothers begins with our own Fionnula Flanagan being blown away in what it later transpires is not quite a routine drug-store holdup. The courageous old biddy (a former hippie) had made it her business to take care of local layabouts, notably the four titular chums. Fiery Mark Wahlberg, family man André Benjamin, red-hot lover Tyrese Gibson and unconvincing rocker Garrett Hedlund set out to exact revenge. A hoodlum, apparently cryogenically frozen during the era of Funkadelic and played with unlikely dignity by an unexpected Chiwetel Ejiofor, lurks in dark places plotting terrible things.

Such revenge dramas are, the odd narrative chicane aside, usually agreeably linear affairs. Unfortunately, the writers here feel the need to complicate matters with a series of head-spinning twists which don't fit together in any sensible fashion. The good news is that, supplementing that blaxploitation funk, there are a great many Motown hits to distract viewers as they fail to make sense of the concluding, confused showdown.