If you’ve ever been called a film bro, it was probably as an insult. Movies typically thought of as being linked to film bros can be good, but they’re sometimes misinterpreted by people who get called film bros, which is a big reason why the term is derogatory. Film bro movies often have violent/dark stories, above-average levels of intensity, and in-your-face visual stylistic choices. And they’re often about men, directed by male directors, which is probably where the ‘bro’ part of ‘film bro’ comes in. But film bro movies can be good, and it’s silly to dismiss them all just because you might feel they’re particularly popular among younger and/or somewhat immature film fans. The following films will hopefully show that, since they all fit within the realms of film bro cinema (justifiably or otherwise), but are all genuinely good, regardless of how many people enjoy them for questionable – or outright wrong – reasons. 10 ‘Scarface’ (1983) Al Pacino firing a gun as Tony Montana in Scarface Image via Universal Pictures Scarface is a movie about how it doesn’t pay to be a criminal, because it very obviously tells a rise-and-fall story in line with the sorts common to the earliest era of gangster movies, but at the same time, being a criminal looks like a blast. At least some of the time. Scarface goes all out with style and bombast in depicting a very heightened 1980s back when the decade was still very much ongoing, and that’s part of where the fun of it all comes from. Tony Montana is sometimes glorified, or seen as cool, even if Scarface is funnier if you treat it like a cocaine-fuelled spin on a classical/Shakespearean tragedy, with all the melodrama dialed up not to 11, but somehow beyond it. The shootout and some of the stuff that happens before the big ending are equal parts cool and kitschy, sure, but Tony Montana himself stops feeling cool, at a certain age, a little like how The Sopranos feels like more of a comedy (and many of its main characters feel continually sillier) the older you get. Same for Walter White in Breaking Bad, truth be told. The Sopranos and Breaking Bad might be catnip for TV bros, if that’s a possible term. 9 ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures 2019’s Joker might be more of a film bro movie than The Dark Knight, but The Dark Knight is the better movie, and it’s also pretty film bro-ish, so putting it here instead of Joker feels right. Though Joker is still interesting to think and talk about, in a post-Folie à Deux world, since that sequel felt like it was made specifically to annoy people who found some kind of catharsis or coolness in Joker. And it worked, since nobody really liked it or recommended it enough for the film to be profitable. Anyway, The Dark Knight has so many fans, and it’s a pretty easy movie to fall head over heels for, with some of those fans potentially liking the Joker here a little too much. But also, if you’ve got a villain some people feel is in the right, or had a point (even if it’s hard to know, sometimes, how sincere those people are being), then maybe there’s an argument to be made that you’ve written that villain quite well (see also Thanos, for better or worse, in Avengers: Infinity War). 8 ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013) You’re going to see Martin Scorsese pop up a few times here, even if his films do tend to
Leave a Reply