Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The Brothers McMullen Blu-ray Movie Review

Stuck in the Middle with . . . Me??

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 15, 2012

The 1990s were a fertile decade for independent film and spawned numerous stories of determined auteurs living on crackers and ketchup and maxing out credit cards to get their vision onto the screen. Two famous examples of hits made on shoestring budgets that led to major careers came from filmmakers who couldn't be more different: Robert Rodriguez with El Mariachi (1993) and Edward Burns with The Brothers McMullen. Rodriguez proved that you could make a suspenseful and entertaining crime/adventure film without money or stars. Burns did the same thing for engaging, relatable character drama that spoke to a broad audience. He also managed to get laughs out of simple props like a banana (and not just the peel).

The Brothers McMullen is the ultimate demonstration of the adage that a good script is the only true essential to a successful film. Burns made the movie without a crew, without hair and make-up, without licenses for locations, without any ability to pay his actors (his mom provided lunch), without a regular shooting schedule (they shot on weekends and whenever Burns had time off from his job as a production assistant at Entertainment Tonight), and without light other than what nature provided. He didn't even have "real" film. To save costs, Burns used what are known as "short ends", which are the unused portions of film reels that have already been exposed and can therefore be bought cheaply, because the buyer takes them "as is".

What Burns did have was an interesting story, vivid characters and sharply written dialogue. And because money was tight and he couldn't afford to waste film on "coverage", Burns had pre-edited the movie on paper, determining exactly what shots he'd need for each scene—a process that ensured there was no fat in the script by the time the actors showed up for work.

"Hey, I like being a pessimist. It makes it easier to deal with my inevitable failure." — Finbar McMcullen

In a kind of prologue, Finbar "Barry" McMullen (Burns) bids farewell to his mother (Catharine Bolz) at his father's funeral. She's returning to Ireland. The significance of that departure is gradually revealed during the film.

Five years later, Barry, who is the middle child between older brother Jack (Jack Mulcahy) and younger brother Patrick (Mike McGlone), is an aspiring screenwriter and serial dater. He's in the process of breaking up with Ann (Elizabeth McKay), which will leave him homeless, since he's been sharing her Manhattan apartment. Jack still lives in the Queens house where the brothers grew up; he's married to Molly (Connie Britton), who has just turned thirty and hears the loud tick of her biological clock, while Jack finds one excuse after another to postpone starting a family. Patrick, a former altar boy and the most overtly Catholic of the three brothers, has managed to get involved with a Jewish girl, Susan (Shari Albert), whose father wants to give him a job and buy them an apartment, on the assumption they'll be married soon. The prospect scares Patrick more than hellfire (and Patrick is really frightened of hellfire).

All of these cross-currents swirl around the dining room table at Connie's thirtieth birthday party, which is where the film catches up with the brothers after the prologue. Over the next eight months or so, each brother follows the path that has been quietly laid out for him over that dinner, and all roads lead back home, where Patrick and Barry end up moving into their old room on the top floor, when money and circumstances leave them without roofs over their heads.

What gradually becomes clear, as the brothers confide in, advise, evade and insult one another, is how alike the three of them are in their dealings with women, no matter how differently they may have tried to proceed. Jack may have married an Irish girl like his mom, Patrick may have tried to love someone as utterly different as he could find, and Barry may have chosen the cynic's route of distrusting all women (and selecting those, like Ann, who live down to his expectations), but all three of them are terrified of recreating the kind of family in which they were raised—a vicious, loveless environment presided over by an abusive drunk ("I'm happy to report he's still dead", says Barry) and a mother who raised them only out of a sense of duty and fled the moment she was free to do so. It's this primal, unspoken fear that sends Jack reeling into an affair, even though his marriage is perfect; that sends Patrick pinging back and forth between Susan and the neighborhood girl, Leslie (Jennifer Jostyn), who actually listens to him; and that keeps Barry on the prowl until he's brought up short by Audrey (Maxine Bahns), a woman who stirs emotions he's never felt before.

In other hands, this kind of material could turn serious and catastrophic, but Burns manages the tricky balance between taking these characters seriously and finding humor in their predicaments. "I don't need any new ideas. I'm confused enough already!" says Patrick, and the line plays as a joke, but it's also a serious statement about how badly stuck each of the brothers is in the pits they've dug for themselves (and each other). Indeed, they do need some new ideas, or at least some new directions, and Burns is smart enough to end the film with just a hint of new possibilities around the corner. Like the character he plays, Burns may be a pessimist, but he's also a good screenwriter, and an effective comedy needs a happy ending.

The Brothers McMullen Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The presentation on Fox's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray will separate those who know film (and, specifically, The Brothers McMullen) from those who only know hi-def video. If you belong to the former group, you will recognize the Blu-ray as a first-rate job; if you belong to the latter, you will complain (as one user review already has) that this is "NOT an HD transfer".

The Brothers McMullen was shot on 16mm film (not even Super16, as Burns notes in his commentary), using "short ends" film stock, which delivers inconsistent quality at best. No dailies were processed to be reviewed, and even if they had been, there was no opportunity for reshoots. If a take came out fuzzy or grainy, it didn't matter; that's what had to be used. The crew consisted of four people at most, and no lights or lighting rigs were available. The cinematographer was a video technician named Dick Fisher, who also edited and co-produced the film.

The result was a finished product that varies wildly from shot to shot. Some scenes look clean and smooth; others pulse with grain. Some have excellent delineation of detail, even in shadows. Others are dark and show major black crush that swallows up detail. Colors can be reasonably strong in scenes where natural light provides effective exposure for the film; in others, especially indoors, the colors look weak and washed out. (All of the locations, both indoors and out, were used as they were found; there was no art direction or set dressing.)

The important quality for purposes of a technical review is that everything in the film, warts and all, has been rendered as is, and you can't ask for more from a Blu-ray presentation. Don't like the film's low-budget aesthetic? Fine, but that's a matter of taste, not a technical flaw. To change the look of this film via digital manipulation would be an act of revisionism that would be a disservice not only to Burns's achievement but also to viewers who enjoyed The Brothers McMullen precisely because it's such a triumph of content over form—a demonstration that a great script and sincere performances shine through even when the image is rough and continuity is all over the map (a subject that Burns discusses at length in his commentary).

Indeed, only an HD transfer could handle grain of the thickness that appears in some scenes of McMullen. A low-resolution, low-bandwidth format like DVD would probably choke, because the graininess is the equivalent of constant motion in every part of the frame. Fox should be congratulated for taking the right approach, neither stripping away the grain (and picture detail with it) nor trying to soften or freeze it into unnatural patterns. Instead, for better or worse, they've given us The Brothers McMullen as it would appear on a 35mm blow-up projected in a movie theater. And that's a good thing.

The Brothers McMullen Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD MA 1.0 track delivers the dialogue clearly, although the post-production looping is sometimes unavoidably obvious. Even though it's limited to one channel, Seamus Egan's terrific Irish folk-inflected score has good presence and dynamic range, and Sarah McLachlan's vocal for "I Will Remember You" (which she co-wrote with Egan) sounds almost as good over the closing titles as if it were in stereo.

The Brothers McMullen Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Writer-Director-Actor Edward Burns: Burns provides a wealth of detail about how, where and when he shot various scenes, and he offers a lot of practical advice on how to save money. (Of course, the advice is tailored to the kind of talk-heavy films that Burns makes, but what do you expect?) He's almost compulsive in pointing out continuity errors and affirming that they don't seem to make any difference. Many professional film editors would agree, though.


• Fox Movie Channel Presents Fox Legacy with Tom Rothman (SD; 1.33:1; 14:26): In this short for the Fox Movie Channel, Rothman relates how The Brothers McMullen became the first release by the newly established Fox Searchlight division of Twentieth Century Fox.


• Theatrical Trailer (SD; 1.33:1; 2:01): An accurate preview of the film.


• Booklet: A glossy insert containing extensive production notes about the film. Unlike the booklet included with the Fox "Signature Edition" of She's the One, this booklet does not contain cast bios.

The Brothers McMullen Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While my personal favorite amongs Burns's films remains She's the One, The Brothers McMullen holds up as an engaging entertainment because it feels authentic. The people, their conflicts, their concerns, their mistakes, everything still rings true. It's hard enough to get that sensation into a film when making it is your full-time job, but harder still when you're doing it on the sly with no money and no support. Burns earned his career the hard way, and this Blu-ray from Fox is an apt record of the struggle. Highly recommended.