From actors who play rappers to rappers who play actors or My Review of Four Brothers

Warning: There are spoilers. The terms wigger, nigger and white boy are used throughout this review. You are reading an unedited review (cuz it’s on my blog) until I remove this notice.

In John Singleton’s latest blockbuster film, Four Brothers, we are treated to a new twist on this successful writer and director’s M.O.: that of a white boy lead in an urban and (not so) gangsta film. Marky Mark plays a wigga, an enthusiastic leading “Brotha” whose bloodlust for vengeance overwhelms the screen and for whose character I will highlight in this commentary.

While the title implies a movie about four brothers, the reality is that Marky Mark is the star of this show and while that isn’t particularly noteworthy, his constant racial remarks with derogatory undertones are overwhelming. White youngsters flocked to the movies looking for this new film to glorify their hip hop/gangsta fantasies and they cheered on Marky Mark as he repeatedly beat down Black men, spewed racial epithets and overall killed to defend the life of his adoptive mom, the revered white angel. Indeed, I found numerous scenes that made me laugh out loud with their stupidity, but overall I found myself watching in stunned disbelief as Marky Mark’s racial antics became more outrageous with every scene. John Singleton lost his place as a politically conscious writer a long time ago, I think the demise of Baby Boy speaks to his crash and burn urban film success, however rewriting a familiar plot, adding some Black music and a couple of famous Black music entertainers of the time and spicing it up and otherwise dull plot with a white lead character who adopts obviously “ethnic” behavior serves to be just the formula Singleton needs to get back on top. He wholeheartedly proclaims white might and right while casting Black men as goons, hypersexualized playboys or ignorant sidemen.

Singleton’s interjection of a Latino mami also served to bring some flava to the film, or at least allowed Marky Mark to practice his cross-cultural skills. Dubbing her La Vida Loca and having Marky Mark repeatedly berate her as a stupid, no English speaking ho, really helped to add to the movies texture, and of course was an integral part at creating Marky Mark’s characterization. I kept waiting for Bobby Mercer (Marky Mark’s character) to find an Arab or Asian and get into racially charged arguments with them, too.

With the killers assassinated halfway through the movie, and the second half dedicated to figuring out why the white angel was murdered, I kept hoping Marky Mark would somehow end up dead. In a town depicted as run down, rough and suffering from poverty, I found it hard to believe that a single white male could run around banging on Black people with no repercussions, I don’t care who his mother was. I was surprised at how strongly my rage for his insolence was. Every time the wigger slammed a Black body, shot at a Black body, or made a comment about Blackness my rage escalated because I imagined how white audiences were cheering, laughing and absorbing these interactions as the most delightful entertainment. I was also naively turned off by the fact that Singleton’s reductive discussions around race included Marky Mark explaining to Andre 3000’s kids that he was their uncle, introducing the other white brother as “Cracker Jack”, and informing a particularly “tough” Black goon of Victor Sweet’s that he was being labeled as a “house nigger” in the streets because of his loyalty. I mean, should we go into the debate about whether whites can/should/do go around using nigger towards other Black people or themselves? Did unskilled actor, Julia Stiles, end that debate in O, when she told Mekhi Phifer that she can use the word because her people invented it?

We all know that affirming whiteness sells, and nothing affirms whiteness more than hating Blackness. Let’s review the last scene of the film: And am I the only one who saw the symbolism in the bad boy turned crusader American wigger, Bobby Mercer, beating up and summarily orchestrating the gruesome death of the corrupt, greedy, power hungry mobster, Victor Sweet, played by Nigerian Chiwetel Ejiofor (of course, the revenge was aided by the frustrated and Union-member believing Black Americans whom were fed up with Sweet’s similarly corrupt leadership)?

The fact remains, for me, that entertainment is not wrong. Fantastical movies of action-paced suspense and thrillers are fun. I like to punch the gas in my little Rav4 every so often and cut off the next guy who cut me off. However, when the unjusts of the real world are reified by fantastical images, successful images that gross $46.3 million whereby these images produce a modernized minstrel show (do we forget that it was white men who originally put on the blackface and acted like coons), I can’t help but sigh at how far we have not come. How different this movie would have been with just two main character changes: a Black angel killed and her four Black sons avenging her death. I sit and watch all white movies and can find them interesting and entertaining, do white people really need a white face to consider something quality? Obviously so.