Fridae

I don't know if I've ever seen a gay character in a gritty gangster thriller like Four Brothers. To be honest, I don't watch a lot of gangster flicks - I am gay after all. I'm about as comfortable with all this inner-city macho shit as a straight man would be in a sweaty gay sauna.

But Four Brothers promised a gay character in the form of Garrett Hedlund - a cute strapping rock musician who is one of the four brothers. The other three brothers are Mark Wahlberg (still handsome and hard-bodied after all these years), Tyrese Gibson (an African American model-turned-actor) and Andre Benjamin (the singer of the band Outkast).

So I dragged my sorry sagging ass to the cinema just to see how the faggot would fit into the foursome. I walked into the cinema humming the Sesame Street tune, "One of these things is not like the others/ One of these just doesn't belong/ Which of these things is not like the others/ Can you find it before I finish this song."

As it turned out, Garrett is obviously "one of these things." Even though he's straight acting, he's not nearly as macho and violent as the rest of them.

At the start of this enjoyable movie, our gayboy is wearing T-shirt, leather pants and a puffy hairstyle - just like the one Little Richard has stubbornly sported for yeeears. Sooo gay. And when Garrett is strumming his guitar pensively on his bed, thinking about his dead foster mother who had just been gunned down by killers, he is the very picture of a hypersensitive singer-songwriter.

But Garrett is most obviously gay when the brothers go on a killing spree to avenge their foster mother's murder. He is rarely given the gun - the filmmakers seem to think that gay men can't shoot. In a rare instance when he does take the gun to shoot at a couple of hoodlums, his brother Mark says comically, "You go, girl." When his brothers kill the hoodlums, Garrett stands back and bursts into tears.

A note to director John Singleton: Gay men can shoot - I've slept with enough NS (National Service) marksmen to know. Also, if some thugs murdered our mothers, I don't think we shed tears upon their deaths.

Yet, despite the film's stereotypical depiction of the gay brother as being less macho than his straight brothers, the film acquits itself by showing how strong the love and camaraderie among the brothers are. Sure, Garrett gets teased a lot about his sexuality. But each of his straight brothers loves and looks out for him no less than any of the other brothers. And the frequent squabbling among them only underscores how much they care for one another.

In short, Four Brothers' portrayal of tough brotherly love says more about the acceptance of gay family members than any number of "I love you" pronouncements.

Mark the eldest seems especially fond and protective of his youngest brother Garrett. In one memorable scene where gangsters are spraying hundreds of bullets on their home, Mark tries to rescue Garrett while shards of broken glass and wood splinters fly around him. Imagine Mark as your brother when you were growing up - he'll beat up any school bully who calls you "queer."

Indeed, Mark is an even bigger reason than Garrett to watch the film. Playing the eldest brother, Mark is in his element. You root for him constantly - whether he's making gay jokes about Garrett, or punching the daylights out of the Mafia boss in the final showdown.

If there were any doubts that Mark has enough star voltage to light up a city, his performance in Four Brothers should quash them.

All in all, Four Brothers is an enjoyable gangsterama with enough action, carnage and mayhem to satisfy any butch boy or chapstick lesbian. As a tough biker dyke once told me, sometimes all a girl really needs is a can of beer and a good action movie. Here's the movie. Sneak in your own can.