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Blood Brothers (2007)

Produced by John Woo and inspired by his film Bullet in the Head, expectations for Blood Brothers were really high. Set in the 1930's the film is about the relationship between three young men who leave their village and come to Shanghai to find a fortune. They are close to each other like brothers. In fact, two of them, Kang and Hu, are real brothers. The third guy is Fung, played by Daniel Wu.

As the film starts, we see Fung in a Western suit, standing in front of a car. It is snowing heavily and we then switch to a close-up of Fung's doleful facial expression. He looks completely exhausted with dark circles around his eyes. As his eyes raise the camera switches to his eye view and we see a dead body covered with blood laying on the backseat of the car. We then hear Fung's off-stage voice narrating in Mandarin, "I keep asking myself, why did we agree to come to this place? I thought it was going to be paradise." The title card plays accompanied by bright piano music. Right after that we see an innocent version of Fung sitting with a girl in his village. Soon after this sweet moment a scene follows in which he and his two friends, brothers Kang and Hu, talk about leaving the village to go and earn some money as waiters in Shanghai.

While showing part of the ending right at the beginning of the film, foreshadowing that the film we are about to watch is a tragedy, it is not a new way of setting up a film. However, it works well in Blood Brothers. As the movie propgresses, we see how the three friends go to Shanghai and get deeper and deeper into the world of crime. They end up working for the most powerful gangster boss in the city. And what kind of a gangster boss would he be hadn't he got a hot wife? In this case she is played by Shu Qi and unfortunately, the film developed exactly into the direction that I hoped it would not. As Kang even says at one point in the film, "It is always about the girl!"

What saves the film however is that only about one third of it is spent on scenes where "it is all about the girl." That and some very good action scenes, in the form of gunfights that mainly occur during the final third of the film. A great moment is the introduction of a character called Mark. The fact that he is a killer who works with guns in combination with the fact that John Woo produced the film, leads me to assume that this Mark-character is a tribute to Chow Yun-fat's Mark, whom he played in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow. In Blood Brothers, Mark is played by Chang Chen of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame.

What really impresses are the costumes, the set design and the cinematography. The music, composed by Daniel Belardinelli, seems a bit old-fashioned at times, as if it came from a 1950's or 60's film. Not a bad choice in my opinion, as it helps creating the feeling of realism. Yes, most of us do associate old times with the music we hear in old films.

Overall, Blood Brothers is a good film, with varying acting performances. While it shows that Daniel Wu has really grown as an actor (even though you might notice that Mandarin isn't his first language) I was disappointed with Shu Qi's performance. Being able to shed a few tears in front of the camera doesn't make her the right choice to play a lead character in a film with such a great a premise.

Written on March 16th 2008

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