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four brothers
Terrence Howard and Josh Charles as two Detroit cops who are on the brothers’ side.
“I knew this was a winter movie,” comments Benjamin, “but I had no idea what we were getting into. I mean, it was so cold, there were certain scenes where I couldn’t move my mouth. I would have been OK if I had on the right gear. But I was in Jeremiah’s clothes, so I was just wearing cheap slacks, bad gloves and shoes, and a thin little coat.” Then there was the ice hockey. As kids, the Mercer brothers had had a tradition of playing ice hockey - the ‘Turkey Cup’ - every Thanksgiving. Wahlberg, ever the perfectionist, trained on the ice for a couple of hours every day before production began. And Hedlund had played the sport at school, so needed no more than a little refresher course. Gibson and Benjamin were not as lucky, however. “When I found out we’d be playing hockey,” says the latter, “I figured they’d just use a stunt double. But a week before the scene was set to shoot, daily hockey lessons showed up on the schedule. The first couple of days, I hated it. But by day three or four, I’m sliding and shaving ice. I’m no Wayne Gretzky, but I will ice skate again.” But the cold, maintains Singleton, is all on the outside. “It’s a hot movie,” he jokes. “It’s funny, dramatic, suspenseful… and we’ve got four cool dudes in it that everybody’s going to want to see.” For the director, Four Brothers marks a return to studio film-making after the low-budget indie film, Hustle & Flow, which was a hit at Sundance this year. But he managed to find a part in the new movie for Terrence Howard, the star of that film, who plays a childhood friend, now a detective with the Detroit Police. “I think he realises that they’re fighting for this woman who was completely innocent – that they’re determined to stand and fight for the righteous,” says Howard, summing up the theme of Four Brothers. “This is the one person in the world who showed them a spirit of love, and someone took away that light. He sees them thrust back into this dark place, huddled together to find some emotional warmth, but they don’t know how to show it.” Or, as Hedlund puts it, “These are brothers by choice, not by blood.”
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