Starring: Michael Miu Kiu-wai, Eason Chan Yik-shun, Andy Lau Tak-wah
Director: Derek Chiu Sung-kei
Category: IIB (Cantonese)
Tony Leung Chiu-wai should have no regrets over his decision to decline to be part of the first big screen reunion of the so-called Five Tigers - the group of actors that anchored TVB in the 1980s - in 16 years. The remaining four 'tigers' (Andy Lau Tak-wah, Miu Kiu-wai, Felix Wong Yat-wah, and Ken Tong Chun-yip) are in for nearly as tough a time as the audience in Brothers, a tired gangland caper that manages to equal the insignificance of the group's previous outing, The Tigers (1991).
There are occasional flashes of the skill demonstrated by director Derek Chiu Sung-kei in The Log (1996), one of the better cop films of the 1990s. But despite a scenario by Kong Yun-cheung and The Log's John Chan Kin-chung, there is little to involve the viewer in the unfolding drama between underworld kingpin Yiu (Miu) and younger brother Shun (Eason Chan, far left, in the role intended for Leung).
The picture hints at Godfather-like pretensions in the opening sequence. Set 20 years earlier, it establishes the Tam clan's ruthlessness and penchant for over-acting as embodied by Putonghua-speaking patriarch Tin (Wang Zhiwen). He decides to separate his adolescent progeny due to a fortuneteller's prophesy of disaster, simultaneously sowing the seeds of catastrophe by antagonising fellow mobster Uncle Kau (Fong Ping), a man so hostile it's a wonder the supposedly clever Tin hasn't arranged for his demise.
