Four Brothers (2005)

Elevator Pitch: When an old lady is killed, in Detroit, during what is apparently a small scale robbery, her four adopted sons, two black and two white, meet at her funeral and it soon becomes apparent that rather than a robbery this was a hit on her because of her actions to prevent criminal activities. So they determine that they will investigate the crime and take revenge on the perpetrators.  They take extremely positive actions and soon locate the contract killers, chasing them through the icey streets of the city and eventually killing them. But that is not the end of it. There are even more sinister forces at work, and they find that they will be lucky to survive.

Content: There is no nudity but a woman trying to achieve orgasm by sitting on a vibrating washing machine might count as sex. There is some drinking, and accoring to IMDb an amazing amount of swearing. There are some quite spectactular car chases on the frozen streets of the city. When they come across the villain of the piece they end up in an extreme fire fight at their mother’s house where one of them is killed. The finale takes place on a spectactularly frozen lake, where they are due to use the cash from the old lady’s life insurance to buy off the criminal boss.

A View: The general public have liked this a lot more than the critics, many of whom have thought this overly violent and lacking in subtlety. But it ticked a few boxes for me. I enjoy a good revenge thriller and a couple of well correographed fire fights. Even the car chases were ingenious, and British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor was suitably villainous, hated even by his own gang.  It made a bit of money, and is worth, in my opinion, the moderate cost of a download.

Additional info:  The snow is real snow, the temperature never rising above freezing throughout the shoot.