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Brother review fine performances cant save this narrative misfire



While this era-spanning feature is stunningly shot, it can't hide its inherent dramatic flimsiness

★★☆☆☆

The Canadian film-maker Clement Virgo, who previously directed episodes of The Wire, Billions and Empire, plasters this era-spanning feature with a plethora of structural devices that exist, it seems, to disguise an inherent dramatic flimsiness.

Here in Toronto's hard-knock Scarborough district in the early 1990s, sensitive Michael (Lamar Johnson) and tough Francis (Aaron Pierre) are two loving brothers. Before the first act is complete we learn that Francis, at some vague point in the future, will go missing suddenly. And so the movie, stunningly shot by the cinematographer Guy Godfree, simply treads narrative water, via flashbacks, cross-cuts, side stories and metaphorical non sequiturs (the brothers climb a tower), until finally, two hours later, we reach the point where tough Francis goes predictably

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