Bullet Points: Blood Brother

Part of the magic of movies is they have the ability to transport us to different worlds and allow we, the viewers, to live vicariously through the characters we are seeing on the screen. But some movies aren’t about escapism and allowing us to dream about a different life, some movies make us appreciate the lives we already have… for example the subject of this movie review, Blood Brother.

Sonny, the protagonist in Blood Brother, finds himself in a situation where a past mistake has come back to haunt him and worse he has to deal with a friend he knew from way back in the day (I am talking 2nd grade back in the day) who was recently released from prison and is now going on a killing spree. So if you put yourself in Sonny’s shoes, suddenly that speeding ticket you got or the presentation you have to deliver at work that has been stressing you out or the annoying neighbor who never takes in his garbage cans doesn’t seem so bad.

• What Would You Do?: The movie begins with four teenage running buddies (who call themselves the Demons) as they are out and about doing the things juvenile delinquents do… but then in a matter of minutes their lives were about to be changed forever. The four youths witness a daring armored car robbery gone terribly wrong. The end result, the crooks are dead, the armored guards are dead and the armored car carrying three million dollars is wide open! The Demons decide they aren’t going to let this golden opportunity pass them by, but while three of the four Demons manage to flee the scene (with the money no less) before the cops show up… the fourth Demon, Jake, takes the fall for his boys and is sentenced to 15 years in prison.

• Flip the Switch: After the opening credits, the movie picks up 15 years later on the very day that Jake (Jack Kesy, Death Wish) is getting out of prison… there to meet Jake as he leaves the big house is his Demon blood brother, Sonny (Trey Songz, Texas Chainsaw 3D). My first impression of the adult Jake character was he was super annoying and I was not sure I wanted to sit through the rest of the movie. I am not even sure exactly what it was about Jake that made me dislike him so much (although the gold tooth didn’t do him any favors).  At first it seemed like Jake was going to enjoy some time with his family, and then take his cut of the money (I should point out that Sonny had kept the money in a safe place waiting for Jake to come out before any of the Demons got their cut) and start a new life in South America. But it soon becomes apparent that Jake is not interested in starting a new life, he is obsessed with the 15 years of his life he lost while being in prison and he takes his time lost out on his former friends, brutally killing two of them (Spoiler Alert: Neither of them were named Sonny). When Jake flips the switch, I still really disliked him but now it was for all the right reasons. Jake was super unpredictable, he was a man who was not afraid of going back to prison and basically did not give a shit what happened to him he just wanted to put his former friends through hell, this made Jake extremely dangerous and a strong villain for our hero Sonny to play off of.

• Exorcising the Demons: Jake could have just as easily killed Sonny like he did his other two former friends, but Jake wanted to toy with Sonny and really drag out the suffering. Sonny becoming a cop had a lot to do with Jake’s evil motivation. Jake felt like Sonny wasn’t being his true self and he was trying to bring back the Demon he knew when they were troublesome teenagers. And it wasn’t just Sonny who felt Jake’s wrath, Sonny’s estranged wife and her younger sister, Darcy, were targets… in fact, Jake creeping on the teenage Darcy made my skin crawl and created some of the most tense scenes in the film. As the movie progressed, there was no way anyone could feel any sort of empathy for Jake and the fact that he took one for the team and I was waiting with great anticipation for Sonny to take down his blood brother once and for all.

If you are expecting Blood Brother to be a non-stop action fest, you are going to be disappointed… the movie does feature some shoot out action, a car chase and an explosive jail break but the movie is drama heavy as you might expect with characters that have had a life long bond that now find themselves in much different places… I think the Sonny character said it best when he said everyone of us has a demon inside… Jake was trying to feed his demon, Sonny was trying to kill his.

Now seems like a good time to feed my need for some Bonus Bullet Points…

• Familiar Face: Blood Brother was co-produced by Codeblack Entertainment and WWE Studios. The unwritten rule for any movie produced by WWE Studios is that a WWE Superstar is required to appear… Blood Brother obeys that rule as R-Truth (aka Ron Killings) has a small supporting role in the film. Truth plays Blaine, the local pimp who does some gun running on the side.
• AKA: The working title for Blood Brother was Brothers’ Blood.
• Missed Opportunity: I was a little surprised that Trey Songz did not contribute to the Blood Brother soundtrack. Trey has had a great deal of success in the music world including two Top 10 hits on the Billboard charts, “Bottoms Up” and “Say Aah”.
• NOLA: Blood Brother was filmed in New Orleans, Louisiana.