User Reviews

I am about 70% of the way through this movie and I had to stop. I couldn't go any further after seeing the "wooden" teller counter in the bank bow under the weight of "Linc". I couldn't stop laughing after that. This movie is agonizing. It's painful to watch. I've always told people who criticize some of the "B" level horror films that I'm in a habit of watching that you have to suspend reality for two hours to enjoy most films. It's Hollywood. Enjoy the fantasy trip. But this film won't even let me suspend common sense, let alone reality. I'm guessing that the movie is supposed to be set sometime in late 1800's. I'm guessing because the movie is not even convincing me that it could have been set in any reasonable past time frame. Where to begin...the clothes...the clothes are a joke. It's the wild west meets MTV. Is it a movie or a music video...hmmm???? Check out the woman in the bank robbing gang. Women may have dressed that way in the wild west bordellos, but not for trail riding and bank robbing. The situations are laughable. You can't convince me that there were any women sheriffs and/or deputies or women bank tellers in the wild west days. The acting is deplorable. Where did they get the mayor and his wife...some Disney movie? And who's idea was it to bring Bill (David Carradine's character from Kill Bill) back to life and send him back in time to the wild west? Carradine doesn't have much to lose by starring in this film. He's already at the end of his career. But for the countless young actors and actresses who made the bitter error of choosing this vehicle as a ladder climbing notch in their belts have opted for a bullet hole in their careers. I'm going to try to make it through the balance of this film and return it shamefully to my local Blockbuster store. But I highly recommend this film for file 13. You know, the round file...the trash.....

This is one of those movies that I couldn't even sit all the way through, and I have sat through some absolute crap in my days, even many Baldwin movies! I don't mind the blacksploitation genre, but this one was just terrible, acting was terrible, story line was terrible, costumes were cliché and let's not even get into the historical plausibility.

The bottom line is: even if you can get this movie for free or see it with a friend, you'll regret the hour+ of your life that you spent watching it (or less time if you can't sit through it like me).

On the plus side it may be good for a laugh if you're drunk at home with some mates, although it still doesn't have the drunken laughter appeal of something like Python or any of the 70's and 80's cult movies.

If you want a serious movie, don't get this, if you want a drunken laugh then only get this if ALL of the 80's horror films are already hired out.

I gave it a score of one because 'awful' really is fitting.

This is by far the worst movie I have ever seen and the director deserves to be punched in the face. First, there's the massive history inaccuracy. I'm not racist, but why the hell are blacks and whites mixing with each other in a bar in 1866, in Texas, a year after the civil war!?! Second, the editing is atrocious, the worst I've ever seen. During a scene where the main cast is surrounded in a house with heaps of bad guys are shooting away, a scene where one of the guys in the house sticking a shotgun out a window is repeated 4 times. 4 times!! And by the time the shotgun sound is added in we've skipped to another frame! Third why the hell did I watch this movie! there were heaps of other better looking movie to hire but I had to pick this one! I could go on for ages about how crap this movie is, but I won't. I'd give this movie zero, but the rating system won't let me. Just don't see this piece of crap.

This film is waste of time, money, oxygen, cigarettes, cokes, electricity, etc. It cannot be worse than this. There is no acting, no directing, no camera moves or tricks or effects... The script is awful. Full of clichés, the worst ones... Music is just stupid. The casting is utterly and totally catastrophe. I like KURUPT though. But he does not talk very much. They tried to mix the white western culture and black R&B-HIPHOP thing!!! I don't even know what to call it. What is David Carradine doing there? Believe me I really want to give away the ending, but I will not, I don't know why. just DON'T !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please... I am begging you

Something is really wrong with this movie.

I don't know much about American History. I would think at that point of time, Blacks are heavily discriminated even in the 1960s when a Black person had to give up his or her seat in a bus to a White. Here we have in this movie, a Black Lady Sheriff. Is that real? Also Blacks can freely wander into the Saloon and mingle with the rest of the crowd without any incident? I would think, at that time, drinks will not be served to Blacks.

Another flaw, one of the Bank robbers, the Hero who died allowing his brother to escape through a side window, wore a Leather Jacket with zippers. Zippers came into production only in 1930.

This is one of the worst films i have ever seen in my life. I have wasted my time with this movie. For this movie a new scale should be invented....from 0 to -10. Gabriel Casseus (Linc) and Antwon Tanner(Zane) must have payed lots of dollars to "act" in this movie. Some people think that anyone can become a movie star.

Don't waste your time with this movie. Now if i wold write more about this movie i would waste more of my time. I hope that not so many people will have to be tricked to watch this movie, a movie made by a bunch of "antiprofesionists". This movie should be in The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made!, top 10 actually. Escuse my English please. I speak Romanian.

I can't believe someone would actually want to put this film out for the public to view. Acting was pitiful on most parts (Caradine and some of the other veteran actors excepted). Costumes ranged from tight leather pants and tube top to "Western" costumes from a bargain Halloween store. From the wimpy bank manager to the W.C. Fields mayor, characterization was corny and I felt embarrassed for the actors. I can't even begin to describe the errors and bastardization of Western life and culture. An absolute travesty. This relates to BAD as "Unforgiven" relates to great. I think a 5-year-old could write a better story, film it and direct it... probably even act in it! If someone wants to play cowboy and film it for fun with friends fine, but don't bother publishing it. I do believe you should ad at least a ZERO to your voting scale.

Rap hip hop cool western, yo! A gang of black cowboy gangstas are planning the biggest heist of their lives. A fortune is passing through a small bank in a godforsaken town ruled by a sinister tyrant and his sadistic son. The paths of the gang and the tyrant passed before, and sweet revenge or brutal death is imminent as they meet again.

Now, this actually sounds quite intriguing to me, but there is one huge problem: The movie actually takes itself dead serious, while it on the best is a big joke.

OK, I can try to ignore the girls in the movie has silicon enlarged lips, with a tattoo outliner and a nice lip gloss thrown in, looking like some random prostitutes dragged off the street, with much less acting skills than you would expect even from a female of that given profession.

I can also try to ignore the desperate attempts at trying to be new by putting every known western cliché upside down, like the women are the strong ones kicking the guys butt, the black people are the cool dudes from da hood untouched by the slavery common a the time, while the white guys at best are stupid and pathetic cannon fodder, or at best evil and rotten to the bone.

I bet the director would be sued for racism if he movie had all the black guys exchanged with white guys. Not that I care about the political correctness of a movie, if the movie is good anything flies.

But, what kind of mindless, drug abused mind have come up with the plot?? I mean, some guys come up with the brilliant plan of walking straight into a bank loaded with treasure yet with no guards whatsoever, flash a gun, take the money before some guy chasing them magically appears outside from nowhere and we have a final shootout.

THATS IT! Swallow it down with some oh so deep soulshattering philosophy about bonds between brothers are stronger than life and death, made into a joke by what is possibly the worst western movie ever made.

I thought it would be refreshing and new, but they killed everything good about western movies, and added a bunch of boring, cliché-filled, badly executed elements instead.

I will even go so far to say that I can in fact enjoy a good turkey, because it becomes so bad it is actually fun to watch in good company, but this.. This is not even that.

Don't SEE THIS MOVIE! IT IS A TOTAL AND UTTERLY WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY! If you need to see an alternative Western movie, see Wild Wild West with Will Smith again instead, it is mindblowingly better than this load of humus.

Let me start out by saying that I am a white male. I thought it was a decent effort at what they were attempting to do with this movie, so I've rated it a 4. But overall, this movie sucked.

Every time the camera was on a different person it was like the show stopped and they were trying to make some big drama out of each character. In order for that to work, people have to care, and I didn't care at all. It was like a bunch of different ideas that they were trying to mold into one film, but they didn't complete any of those ideas and in my opinion they didn't even work together.

Now let me get to the part that is probably controversial. I watched the special features on the DVD to see what the maker of this film, Jean Claude, was thinking... because really, a black western? An urban western?? Hey I'm a fan of Moulin Rouge where they incorporated modern music through the whole movie and it was superb, so I am not against new ideas. But Moulin Rouge was as much of a comedy as it was a love story and musical. It was meant to be a fantasy world of dreamers.

Brothers in Arms was to be taken completely seriously. Jean Claude explained that he wants to be the person to show people that there can be black westerns, that there can be black sci-fi, and a "black race car movie", etc. I admire his intentions, but for the love of God, a black western?? I kept waiting for there to be some kind of narration in the beginning that spoke of blacks in the old west, historically speaking. If that were the case, if the movie were to be documenting the little known black addition to the old west, I would have been glued to the screen. But this movie's attempt to put blacks in a western is like someone making a remake to Roots featuring an all white cast.

"Brothers In Arms" is a decent urban western. The plot is about two brothers and his gang of thieves who plan to rob a bank. The only things that stand in their way are: The corrupt town governor Driscoll and his bounty hunters.

The movie is fast-paced but the bank robbery scene\aftermath is almost half the movie and because of that there is some repetition in the dialogue.

The performances are okay. The standouts are Raymond Cruz as the Reverend and David Carradine as Driscoll. Ed Lauter and Kurupt stand around for most of the film. The gunfights could also use some improvement. When the ending comes it stops being an action movie and starts being a drama, which works actually.

In the end: Besides some minor problems, "Brothers In Arms" is still worth watching.

For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

"Brothers in Arms" is the latest in the sub-genre of 'hip-hop westerns', which stills strikes me as a great idea, but has yet to be realized into something more worthy than direct to video fare (Wild Wild West included). This film doesn't change that. It does have passable performances from Gabriel Casseus and Raymond Cruz to off-set the outright horrible ones of Antwon Tanner and Kenya Moore. Better than average (at least for direct to video) cinematography is overshadowed by the stale production design, dismal writing, dead action sequences, and repetitive stock hip-hop music. Hip-hop could hack it in a western, just hear T-Bone Burnett's work with the Nappy Roots in "The Ladykillers" and imagine the possibilities. But here, it's a complete distraction. How Jean-Claude La Marre ever nabbed David Carradine for this, I can only guess, but he does as good a job as anyone could've done with the writing and, in this kind of wreck, professionalism is the most you could ask for.

The last 5 minutes are so pretentious and melodramatic, they border on unwatchable. Please, save the song for the credits next time. If you want the scene to be powerful, give us a character that we have a reason to care about.

Here's to the next effort in this sub-genre, may it be something deep and resonant... Ernest Dickerson, where are you when we need you!

First of all, I feel I should say that I am a HUGE fan of westerns. So much so, that I am often very forgiving if a western has some shortcomings. But with "Brothers In Arms", I simply could not accept what it had to offer. There are so many things wrong with it. There's the modern hip-hop music score. The characters dressed in costumes that not only look too modern, but don't look like they've been lived in long. The look of the movie is wretched, being badly photographed, badly lit, and filtered to look too murky. The locations in and out of town look boring. The shootouts are badly directed and edited. There's modern slang spoken. There is a female sheriff. And if you put all of his footage together, David Carradine has no more than five minutes of screen time. I can't see this appealing to either an "urban" audience or for western addicts.

We all said at some point 'this was the worst movie i have ever seen',but common...this movie is a shame.I watch 'behind the scenes' or making of' of almost every movie I see...All the actors had only great words regarding the director and his work.The bad part is that even Carradine talked nice about him and the movie.Even Carradine?Well,he's good,maybe we think too much of him,i don't know.In my opinion,the director had the entire fault.Some should just do something else with the money,even donate...but stop doing 'things' like 'Brothers in arms'.I could say a lot of bad words,but i'm not gonna bother no more...1 is way to good for this movie..we should start our votes from 0,1

Factual errors: The film contains several background story scenes which are designed to make the audience care about the characters. However, it is not actually possible to care about any of these characters.

Continuity: David Carradine appeared in several movies which were good. Then, inexplicably, he's in this movie.

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): After being identified by multiple witnesses during a blatant murder in a small town filled with vigilantes, the main characters return the next day to rob the bank. This idea is, in fact, completely f**king retarded.

Anachronisms: Sequined chaps did not actually exist in the old west.

Miscellaneous: The credits for this film list a director and several actors. However, acting and directing do not appear in the film.

Audio/visual mismatch: Good western soundtrack was apparently accidentally replaced with generic hip-hop garbage.

Revealing mistakes: Movie exists.

While parts of this movie are kind of fun, and the director uses some really nice shots, other parts were super lame. The acting overall was mediocre, but given the script, they did about as much as they could with the material. David Carradine was the only standout as far as the acting goes.

There were some costume decisions that were really bad and pulled me right out of the wild west. One character has a jacket with zippers on it. Zippers weren't around back then - they weren't invented until the early 1900s. The female lead's leather, belly-baring, bustier outfit was extremely anachronistic as well. It's straight out of a current day pop video and definitely something you could imagine Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera wearing, but not someone in a western lawless town in the 1800s. These things might seem nit-picky, but those are examples of the half-way done tone of the entire film.

Overall it's a mediocre movie that should have been more fun than it was.

This film is not quite as bad as most people posting here remark. The action scenes aren't great, but they are passable. The actors are all undeniably charismatic. The story has its drawing power with real potential, even if this is never realized. The central problem remains, however: like most 'post-modern Westerns,' it's very unclear what of this we're to take seriously, if any of it. If it is just to be a kind of 'gangsta Western,' then it needs far more and far better action, or if it's to be a comedy, then it needs far more and far better jokes. I think the great disappointment in this film, that it is neither comedy nor action film, nor even some weird hybrid, is what most reviewers are responding to.

I'm going to quote another IMDb reviewer (Winner55) on another film, Raimi's 'The Quick and The Dead.' Since I know this reviewer personally, I know he won't mind; he makes the point about 'post-modern westerns' far better than I could: "The post-modern Western, as a kind of parasitic sub-genre of the Western, began as self-conscious parody of the Western. The precursors were films like The Marx Brothers Go West and Bob Hope's Paleface - films set in the 19th century but including references to events of the 194os. But the post-modern really began to come out on its own as afterthought to the Spaghetti Western, the formula for which included larger-than-life caricatures of the traditional Hollywood Western. The best known of these early Post-Mod Westerns were the Trinity films, but there was actually a more successful American variant from about the same time (early 1970s), Support Your Local Sheriff.

"Notice that all the films mentioned so far have been comedies. For some reason, the makers of Post-Mod Westerns soon began taking themselves seriously, as heavily ironic commentary on the politics of the day - think El Topo, Dirty Little Billy, Doc. Most of these were failures - El Topo once considered a cult film, is virtually unwatchable now.

"But the serious Post-Mods did leave a legacy. Since the mid-1980s, a number of films have deployed the same heavy irony, although politics is no longer a major concern. Among the first noticeable of these revised Post-Mods was the 'Brat Pack'version of the Billy the Kid story, Young Guns. This film sold very well, but largely due to the all-star cast involved; most critics did recognize a deeper problem with it, that it was difficult to determine what of it was serious, what comedic, and what just pure self-indulgence, as in the infamous peyote sequence (which, already bad, nonetheless left such an impression it got redone in Tony Scott's abysmal Domino).

"This problem now really defines the Post-Mod Western. Watching these films, are we indulging in a fantasy, the plot and themes to be taken seriously despite the irony? Or is the irony simply a cheap and easy form of over-intellectualized comedy? The lack of any clear answer is the real lasting impression any of these films leave with us."

I thought this movie has been poorly made, with disregard of any historical sense. The one thing that caught me the most was that the black main character was wearing a leather jacket with modern zippers attached to it. The zipper wasn't designed until 1913, this is way past the cowboy time, this movie is portraying the viewer. Next to this, Woman were definitely not seen as equal to men and there for I raise my doubts about a female sheriff...Than, the one girl in the gang was wearing some type of tank top with her belly exposed, I just don't think women would wear something like that, specially not riding horses.

I am NOT a fan of cowboy movies. I was flipping channels when I saw it on TV. I don't like any of the classics like John Wayne. This movie was very well done and I was captivated for the whole thing. I was so touched by the ending till I had to Google to find out the name of it. I love truly artistic movies, especially when it's by African Americans. This is not one of those stupid movies which is derogatory or demeaning like "Soul Plane" this film was captivating. I recommend that you truly give this movie a real chance it is worth it. I know there are several negative reviews and I have noticed that several of the movies with African American casts get negative reviews. Its easy to judge and write off people and art when you don't open your mind to understand. I hope after reading my review you feel compelled to try to understand this is not meant to be funny, but is a very touching movie.

This is a badly made movie with the most un-charasmatic group of male actors ever - If the invasion of Iraq in 2003 because of WMDs was said to have created 10,000's of jihad fundementalists, then this movie must have created double and pushed anyone thinking about jihad against the Amercians over the fence and into it.

This is due to the severly unlikeable cast, antics and actions they commit while the movie trys to present them as likeable Amercian guys. After 20 mins alone i wanted them all killed in Iraq or put in prison, and at the end of movie I was swearing at them and wish the Police had shot them all.