Four Brothers

Large expanses of snow can often show up the limitations of DVD, but thankfully that's not the case with Four Brothers. The warm tones of the internal scenes and the bleakness of a snowy Detroit shine through beautifully. There are no noticeable flaws in the picture.

The audio mix is a little disappointing. Although the bullets ping the rear speakers in the shootout scene, they're never used to any great immersive effect. Subtitling is all present and correct on the main feature and on the extras, including subtitling the director's commentary.

I've enjoyed John Singleton's commentaries in the past. He's not as talkative as many other directors, but still manages to pump the commentary full of more fascinating information about the filmmaking process than most. Four Brothers isn't up to the standards of others I've heard from him, but it's still the best extra on show.

The four titled 10-minute featurettes could and should have been joined together to make a meatier whole. They compliment the film perfectly without ever degenerating to pointless backslapping. You won't fire up your DVD player just to watch them, but it's nice to know they're there.

The deleted scenes are equally welcome. They're a solid bonus, but without much to ooh and ahh at. That's probably testament to Singleton having a strong vision of what he wants the film to be, and not needing to deviate much from that.

If all DVD packages aspired to at least meet this standard, I'd be happy. By no means a world beater, but appreciated by anyone who likes the film enough to buy it.