Cain and Able. Romulus and Remus. Paul and Barry Chuckle. Brothers are the eternal narrative battlers. There is no stronger love nor hatred than that between siblings. That is until you watch Fratello.
Fratello is the story of brothers Jimmy (Gerard Garilli) and Todd (Steve Mason) who, after Todd accidentally runs over a young girl, go on the run. Will their relationship survive this as it has so many other things, or will this be the end of the road?
There is no consistency of styles in direction, swinging for some headache enducing, over edited static shots to handy cam and then flashbacks. Voice overs appears out of nowhere and while there is some decent imagery, it has absolutely no narrative purpose so it’s just thoughtlessly pretty and vacuous.
As far as dialogue, Fratello is filled with exposition that is utterly unnecessary, and there is nothing worse than being spoon fed irrelevant information, and wooden doesn’t cover the performances on display. There is no feeling at all behind any lines or reactions.
You are struck by the complete lack of tension or dramatic weight to anything that happens. The whole hour long run time was spent saying “they thought this was good enough?”. It’s all so half-hearted, they were obviously more focused on just making a film than actually making something that would be interesting or engaging, so much so the characters don’t even seem to care about what happens.
Just to clarify, when I say half-hearted, I don’t mean that they didn’t try. The effort is there to be seen. This is like the kinds of films that eager teenagers make trying to make it to Sundance, filled with all the obvious dramatic plot points with no thought, just guessing their way through, except these are adults stumbling through poor dialogue and story with no drive.
This is the outcome of a low budget aiming for something of production value and ending up more like Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace without the comedy value. Short this review maybe, but there really isn’t much of a film to review.
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Genna 5th April 2014
I have to disagree. This film was accepted into two major film festivals, one of which is run by Paul Sorvino. I respect your opinion, but I strongly disagree with you.