I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with how well the plot of the John Wayne classic western, The Sons of Katie Elder, was adopted to modern day Detroit.

In the original film, Katie Elder is never seen, the sons arrive in Sweetwater, Texas for her funeral and find out about their dad Bass Elder who was an unsolved homicide. In this film Fionnula Flannagan has the mother role in the very beginning and we see her gunned down in a convenience store holdup. Or was there more to it than that?

You KNOW there's more to it than that and like John Wayne and his brothers, Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin, and Garrett Hedlund are going to not let things rest until they find out. Wahlberg steps very nicely into a modern day version of the Duke and the others fill out the parts that were played by Dean Martin, Earl Holliman, and Michael Anderson, Jr. back in the day.

It's modern day stuff, but the classic scenes from the westerns are nicely adapted. I do like the way the famous scene of the ambush of the Elder brothers is staged in modern Detroit. As those of us who remember the original, one of the brothers doesn't survive. I will say it's a poignantly played death scene.

I do wonder if back in the days when Mark Wahlberg was a real life urban hoodlum in the making, did he have any idea he would be playing a John Wayne part on the silver screen? Life can take some funny turns.

Four adopted brothers (Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, André Benjamin, Garrett Hedlund) reunites when their mother gets shot in a convenient store holdup. Only they find that she may have been targeted. Terrence Howard and Josh Charles play cops, and watch out for Sofía Vergara as a loud girlfriend.

The four guys have an easy flowing relations. They have the brotherly chemistry down. Once you get that, the movie is a lot more easy. The story is straight out of any action B-movie. It has a few too many coincidences, a few too many simplifications, and a few too many easy explanations. But John Singleton has given it enough energy to raise it above everyday violent thriller.

"Four Brothers" is a 108-minute movie from ten years ago that was written by David Elliot and Paul Lovett, both not really that prolific, but they did a good job here. Same can be said about director James Singleton, only that he has made films for many years, also back in 2005 already and scored two Oscar nominations for "Boyz n the Hood" back in the early 90s. And just like in that one, the cast in this film we have here is predominantly black as well. However, there are exceptions such as Mark Wahlberg who plays the main character and the very young, truly unknown Garret Hedlund. Also in it are Tyrese Gibson, Chiwetel Ejiofor and André Benjamin. The latter is the singer from the pretty great band OutKast. He certainly held his own very well here against all these professional actors, which is especially impressive as his character is actually one of the biggest and most significant of the movie.

The plot is as follows: An old lady gets killed during a store robbery and her four sons are out for revenge. They run into good and bad cops and the main antagonist who is surrounded by many henchmen and contract killers. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Terrence Howard and Josh Charles ("The Good Wife") earlier. They also play their parts very well. Do not look for realism or real greatness in this movie. It's a nice revenge tale, but it's not too realistic. Still this wasn't a problem for me as it was mostly a fun watch with nice character elaborations and an interesting story. The ending may be a bit too over the top in terms of how everything looked bad for the title characters, but they manage apparently easily to get out of this mess. Really solid watch and I recommend this movie. Quite a lot of talent in here and that does not only include the cast. Thumbs up.