New film Brotherhood wrongly lionizes brutes

“Brother or bitch.”

That’s the ultimatum given to Adam Buckley (Trevor Morgan), a fraternity pledge and the protagonist of Will Canon’s cleverly titled film. We first meet Adam in the back of a moving van, en route to a convenience store that he will have to rob at gunpoint to be initiated into the upper ranks of Sigma Zeta Chi.

This is what Descartes and Emerson would call a terrible idea.

Unsurprisingly, despite the older brothers’ attempts to mastermind the hazing ritual, another pledge, Kevin (Lou Taylor Pucci) is shot by an equally young and confused convenience store clerk, Mike (Arlen Escarpeta). The brothers, led by the perpetually flustered Frank (Jon Foster) must then save their wounded man without going to a hospital, while keeping the clerk quiet.

Things get worse at every turn, almost comically so. For example, after much shouting and deliberation, a tight-lipped doctor is finally summoned to the house to examine Kevin’s wound. Meanwhile, an army of sorority sisters descends upon the house, admonishing the brothers for a recent panty raid. As the very drunk leader eventually backs her SUV into the road, another car smashes into it, sending glass everywhere. Guess who’s driving the other car?

Brotherhood at least canvasses a relatable subject. Fraternities, resurrected to glory by Animal House, are around us everywhere, from 28th Street to Wall Street. To the outsider, they inspire both idealism and contempt. Some envy the deep bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood, even when the kinship becomes an isolationist mentality, ultimately making the world a more segregated place.

It comes as little surprise, then, that Brotherhood is most successful when illustrating that insulation from the fabric of the real world. The post-shooting “negotiation” between Adam, Mike and an blatantly racist brother (Luke Sexton) is wonderfully perverse in its reversal of common etiquette. Suddenly, the shooting becomes Mike’s fault, as the brothers hammer him to hand over the security tape, sounding more like loan sharks than soon-to-be defendants.

Even before the brothers get back to the house, we are given another glimpse into this island mentality. Another pledge seduces and has noisy sex with an obese girl, only to have his fellow brothers burst in and ridicule the guy’s poor partner, roaring like patrons of a rodeo show. The scene is shockingly effective in its depiction of latent misogyny and sadism that pass for standard discourse in this strange, machismo-fueled world.

These are despicable characters, so much so that the film could only work as a moving portrait, akin to I Stand Alone. As Gaspar Noe probed the “bowels of France” through his depraved butcher, Canon’s film offers a similarly proctologic examination of inner America and its privileged inhabitants who contribute nothing to their environment but further pain and narcissism.

Unfortunately, Canon doesn’t seem to realize this, eventually ousting Adam as the film’s moral beacon, while also drawing heavily from the Reservoir Dogs playbook.

As a whole, the film is a loud, ugly affair with much screaming and little reflection. There’s even a Mexican standoff. This absurdity might have worked had Canon realized the lack of redemptive qualities in his leads, but the film still simpers for our empathy and ultimately insults our intelligence.

There have been successful cases in which loathsome souls are rendered endearing, as with Darren Aronofsky’s self-centered heroin junkies in Requiem for a Dream. As we watched them slide into pits of vomit and despondency, the realization emerged that these were human beings, nailed to their own crosses of syringes, amphetamines and greenbacks.

It’s hard to feel that realization in Brotherhood, not even during Adam’s moments of epiphany. That we never see the brothers in their pre-frat lives adds to the problem. We can’t be expected to identify with these guys if none of the sacrifices they have made to rush are explored.

Presumably Adam and Frank have friends, colleagues and family members beyond the doors of Sigma Zeta Chi, but they are nowhere to be seen.

The real problem is that the classist undercurrents of fraternities were already adequately plucked in Charles Ferguson’s recent documentary Inside Job. Standing beside the grandiose high rises of New York’s financial district and the equally towering arrogance of its traders, Canon’s characters are not only short on complexity, but on purpose as well.