Story:
After completing their last mission, a band of 7 soldiers
decide to give up military life for a more peaceful
and normal life. Each of these seven ex-soldiers have
their very own special personality such as Sarge, leader
of the group, who cant use a gun without his red pants.
A Chinese opera singer with some family conflict. A
wannabe monk who cant resist women. A man who can punch
through steel. A tough mercenary with sentimental problems
and a soldier with a gambling problem.
They were all trying to blend in their new lifestyle
when one of them calls all the others member asking
for help. Their new mission, intercept a military
cargo and seize the truck that are rumored to contain
a wealth of treasures stolen by the US Army. Unfortunately
for them, the mission doesn't go as planned and the
village is now under the control of the US army. The
Brotherhood 7 no longer has any other choice than
to play hard to save their home town.
Review: Thai movies are getting popular these
days and it's easy to understand why. Iron Ladies,
Tears of the Black Tigers and Suriyothai are on the
"must see" movie list of most Asian movie
buffs. Brotherhood 7's quality of production is easily
comparable to those other movies but this time the
movie focuses on the action sequences and special
effects. The movie is maybe at the basic a tribute
to the Kurosawa movie, Seven Samurai and is also highly
inspired by Hong Kong action movies, using a lot of
over the top and exaggerated action sequences all
along. But as soon as you see the very stylish intro
credits you know that this movie will be an action
movie of its own.
At first site, the story is really simple and it
doesn't take very long to figure out what is going
on and what will happen later in the movie. The evil
GI group plays the bad guy and a small band of ex-military
Thai soldier are coming to the rescue. But even if
the story is rather simple, the movie is always fun
to follow. Mixing a lot of humor, action and very
unique characters, you will easily forget the rather
plain story.
Did I say original characters? Characters were one
of the most interesting aspects of the movie. Each
one of the seven soldiers had a very unique style
and personality. I don't want to describe too many
things about the characters since one of the best
parts of the movie is to discover them and see them
evolving and overcoming their own fear during the
course of the movie. As for the bad guys, most of
them are played by English actors, which again looked
stupid in the movie but this time it really fitted
very well since it was probably intentional from the
director to make them look silly. But the best bad
guy was that old Thai general, who can't pull is hand
out of his pocket for security reason of the people
around him. That character was really good but unfortunately
doesn't have a lot of screening time.
The acting was usually decent in general, but seemed
a bit unprofessional in some scenes which sometime
gave a feeling of cheesiness to the movie. Like in
some comical scenes you could notice the actors smiling
or laughing before the other actor pulled out the
joke and the emotional scenes were also a bit non-credible.
If the cast could have been more credible it would
have given a better feel to the movie for sure.
Since the movie is categorized as an action movie,
you are expecting a lot of it. On that side the movie
delivers the goods and even more. The movie reminded
me a lot of those 80's Hong Kong movies were the action
is always done with a touch of exaggeration, something
that American movie has never done until recently.
Brotherhood 7 pushed that touch further with a lot
of fighting, guns fights, stunts and explosion. Some
of the fighting sequences are surprisingly very well
done and graphically violent too but on a humoristic
level only.
The production also uses some 3D digital effect
to make some of these scenes. The fighting sequences
using 3D were very nice but I can't say the same thing
for the action sequences near the end. They had to
use a blues screen that looked really cheap and the
3D models also look very fake but since the movie
is not a serious action film this particularity might
play in favor of the movie.
The movie uses a lot of action to entertain the audience
but also feature a lot of comedy and funny situation.
Action and comedy is always a great mix and Brotherhood
7 is a good example at it. The humor doesn't goes
too deep in the cultural aspect so you won't have
too many problems understanding the jokes. The humor
doesn't fall in the slapstick genre so if you don't
like slapstick humor, don't worry, there some big
chance that you will enjoy the humor very much.
With a very good cinematographic value, crazy and
unique characters, over the top action sequences and
a lot of humor all along, Brotherhood 7 cannot be
taken as a serious action movie. If you are curious
about cinema from Thailand, Brotherhood 7 is a movie
to check out, specially if you like the action/comedy
genre.