A pair of dimwitted twin brothers from a family of thieves tries to pull off one last heist in Brothers, an offbeat comedy now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Can an outstanding cast, including multiple Oscar winners, eight-time nominee Glenn Close, and renowned character actor M. Emmett Walsh in his final role, save what is essentially a braindead SNL-style affair? That’s for you to decide.
To give you an idea of what kind of movie this is, the closest comparisons that come to mind while watching Brothers are Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, the David Spade vehicle Joe Dirt, and Jack and Jill—the latter not so for the quality of the filmmaking, but because one can easily envision a version of this movie starring Adam Sandler in both roles.
Those lead roles are filled instead by Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin, who just happen to be twins, a fact that is never once questioned by any of the characters in the film presented by this pair of very different physical presences. That the film subverts expectations of the kind of comedy that filled the Arnold Schwarzenegger–Danny Devito movie Twins is, in itself, somewhat amusing.
Brothers opens with a flashback that serves as an origin story: somewhere in the rural deep south, 12-year-old twins Moke and Jady bid farewell to mom Cath (Jen Landon) for good when she comes home for Thanksgiving with police in hot pursuit. Mom takes off into the sunset with boyfriend Glenn (Joshua Mikel) while the two brothers, learning all the wrong lessons, embark on a life of crime in her footsteps.
Thirty years later, Jady (Dinklage) is just finishing up a lengthy prison sentence for robbery while Moke (Brolin) has turned a new leaf with wife Abby (Taylour Paige) and a child on the way. But after sadistic prison guard Farful (Brendan Fraser) blackmails Jady into pulling one more robbery, the new ex-con manages to rope his brother into the mix.
Somewhere along the way, the brothers’ long-lost mother (now played by Close) comes back into the picture, and the trio work together to find some buried treasure. But trust between them has long eroded—mom had abandoned the boys three decades earlier, while Jady let Moke take the rap on their previous job, leading to his prison sentence. Will the trio be able to trust each other after all these years?
Maybe, but we have so little invested in these characters it’s hard to work up much rooting interest in their success. The low-key, low-stakes screenplay from Macon Blair feels like it was intended for a much different and perhaps more introspective type of movie; what has ended up on the screen works more on the level of a broad comedy, but when Dinklage and Brolin are biting at each other it works well on those terms.
But what really elevates Brothers above the usual movie of this type is the colorful cast of supporting characters, that also includes Walsh as Farful’s father and an uncredited Marisa Tomei as Bethesda, a hippie who formed a relationship with the incarcerated Moke—and shares a home with a large orangutan that forces itself upon Jady in one of the movie’s most memorable moments. And Fraser is a real highlight: his dunderheaded, foaming-at-the-mouth villain gives the narrative the kind of explosive energy it really needs.
Brothers is crude and crass, and feels caked in grime both literal and figurative; this movie isn’t afraid to go to places few other mainstream comedies would, and it basks in all the filth along the way. But there’s also a sense of honesty about these characters and the world they inhabit: the filmmaking never places itself above these people in the way mainstream comedies of this type might.
It’s also handled with unusual pedigree both in front of and behind the camera: in addition to a cast of award-winning actors who seem to be slumming it, it was directed by Max Barbakow, whose time loop movie Palm Springs was a critical darling and commercial success a few years back. There’s little trace of that level of ingenuity or storytelling ambition in Brothers, but in its stead a special kind of down and dirty charm.
