Half Brothers Review: Unofficial Remake Of Kachche Dhaage?

Half Brothers(Amazon Prime  Video)

Starring  Luis Gerardo Méndez, Connor Del Rio

Directed  by  Luke Greenfield

Rating: **

You know the plot…Two wildly contrasting stepbrothers who have never met, forced  to come together after their father’s death .We saw it in Milan Luthria’s KachcheDhaage where Ajay Devgan and  Saif Ali Khan were the contrasting colliding  brothers, one rough rustic and lacking in social graces, the other suited booted and  hooted for being a stuffed shirt.

 I thought that formula was  dead and gone. But it is back, this time with the Mexican-American border serving as a sufficiently weighty  metaphor for the differences between the two brothers. Hence when the prim  and starchy Renato(Luis Gerardo Méndez) gets  a  call about his dying father who migrated to the US  leaving  little Renato and his mother in  a lurch, Renato is  hardly overjoyed.

How Renato travels to  the US(which he hates) and meets his  stepbrother Asher(Conner Del Rio) whom  he hates  on first sight(actually from long before) and how the two brothers are gradually drawn to one  another as  they clash with goons and friends is the tired tale told too often to be repeated.

Half Brothers is a  predictable  piece of work with scarcely  a moment that we can’t see  coming from far away.Also the contrast between the brothers is created by ferocious design. One wears  dark suits, the other wears bright casuals.One wears  aviators the others were cheap goggles. One is  sullen, The other  boisterous  and  over-friendly. 

Having accepted the  film’s  absolutely shameless formula-mongering  for  brotherly bonding that died with Rain Man, Half Brothers can  be some fun. The shared moments between the two brothers are  ditzy  but smile-evoking . The  road adventure goes into a dizzying tailspin and some of the chase sequences are  imaginatively  choreographed.

I wouldn’t say Half Brothers  is a washout. But  I wouldn’t  go into it unless I’ve nothing else to do.Some have commented  on how the film trivializes  Mexican immigration to the  US. So what’s wrong with  making light  of a grim situation?Laughter is  still the best medicine. Never mind  if Half Brothers serves it up with  blandness . There is still  a semblance  sincerity to the formulistic  proceedings.