Michael (Joel Kinnaman) and Peter (Matthias Schoenaerts) run a union Irish roofing business in Philadelphia. Michael refuses to add the mayor's relative to the payroll. Shorty afterwards fighting escalates between the Italians and the Irish were every mafia death is ruled a suicide.

Peter is dry character. Michael is not developed. The feature had numerous flashbacks which took he a while to grasp decreasing my viewing pleasure. Unexpected ending which was the only saving grace.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

The best thing in this film is Mathias Schoenaerts' presence and performance. For the rest, we already have seen this before, a mob, family mob war scheme, in the Irish and Italian underworld. Doesn't sound it familiar to you, Italian and Irish mob? For me, it is, remember STATE OF GRACE, back in 1990, starring Sean Penn and Ed Harris, but at a far far more powerful scale, ten times better than this one, though not a piece of junk either, let's be fair.

Crime movies don't come any gloomier than Parisian writer & director Jérémie Guez's "Brothers By Blood," a stark melodrama about hard-luck, blue-collar, pugnacious Irish hoods who clash with their Italian rivals over union turf in post-industrial Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The protagonist's working-class Irish hoodlum father Charly Flood (Ryan Phillippe of "The Lincoln Lawyer") tells his 12-year-old son Peter (newcomer Nicholas Crovetti) how Irish and Italian crooks differ. "There's no excuse for hurting yourself on purpose. The Italians know that. Irish don't. It's why they run things and why we don't." Before the smoke finally clears in this grim gangland thriller, our strong but silent hero, Peter (Matthias Schoenaerts of "The Mustang"),will understand Charly's insightful comments. As grownups now, Michael Flood (Joel Kinnaman of "RoboCop") and Peter have inherited their family business. Although they are cousins, they are also polar opposites. The contemplative Peter trains as a boxer at a local gym when he isn't wrestling with his own demons. Meanwhile, Michael obsesses over his status as a minor crime czar with union ties. Peter bottles up his emotions, and Michael has anger management issues. Throughout this R-rated, 105-minute crime thriller, these two circle each other warily as they hold their own against the Italians. Gradually, Peter's patience unravels as Michael's egotism swells out of control. Guez adapted former Philadelphia Daily News columnist Pete Dexter's novel "Brotherly Love" (1991),but he took some liberties with his adaptation. Dexter may be best known for his novel "Paris Trout" (1988) which received the National Book Award for Fiction. He also wrote "Deadwood" the western novel which inspired the foul-mouthed HBO series.

"Brothers By Blood" depicts the decline of a blue-collar Irish crime family. Interspersing flashbacks from Peter's youth, Guez shows how Michael and he have struggled to hold the encroaching Italians in check. Life has been no bowl of cherries for Peter. The most shocking scene is the accidental death of Peter's kid sister. They are leaving their apartment to play outside. Scrambling ahead of Peter out the door into the street, she never saw what struck her. Peter's face as he witnesses this tragedy is frozen in a mask of horror. Later, he saw his grieving father slam his own head in rage and frustration against their refrigerator and put a dent in it. Peter grows up without a mom because she never recovered from her daughter's demise. At one point, when he was a child, Peter ventured out onto the fire escape and leaped off it. Presumably, he must have survived the fall without serious injury. In the opening scene of the film, we see grownup Peter step off the roof of a building, but he lands safely on a pile of rubble. "Brothers By Blood" isn't some trigger-happy "John Wick" shoot'em up, with ad nauseam product placement. You won't have to scribble notes to yourself to keep track of all the narrative twists and turns. Guez keeps things simple but formulaic. Nevertheless, the strong characters are sufficiently compelling as is the stalwart cast that incarnates them. Watching "Brothers By Blood" is like watching a fuse sputter momentarily before it sizzles back to life for a surprise ending. You may want to shoot Michael yourself, and you'll ponder if Peter will make good his promise to split if his cousin doesn't restrain his murderous urges. Guez doesn't have a large cast, and the obligatory romance between Peter and Grace (Maika Monroe of "It Follows"),a gal who tends a neighborhood bar is strictly peripheral. If you're an armchair shrink, Michael will captivate you more than Peter. Guez doesn't trot out any hierarchal crime figures to declare a truce in these vicious street gutter fights. "Brothers By Blood" doesn't have godfathers and clandestine conferences cluttering up things.

"Brothers By Blood" is a hardboiled, no-nonsense thriller. When Guez delivers the ultimate surprise, it should really come as no surprise. Indeed, it should provide relief. Basically, this character study focuses on two cousins on a collision course from the get-go. Parisian though he is, Guez generates loads of foreboding atmosphere, especially in the scenes between Peter and a wise acre Italian mob boss. The weather is overcast usually, and the interior scenes are often dark and edgy. Again, the violence is neither loud nor grandiose in design. We hear about Michael's shooting early on rather than see it. He hobbles on a cane for the rest of the movie. The drive-by shooting scene when Michael pays back the Italians with bullets in broad daylight is appropriately inconspicuous. When the final shootout erupts on the spur of the moment, fewer than five shots ring out.

Joel Kinnaman's volatile performance evokes memories of James Caan's ill-fated Sonny Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" (1972). Kinnaman conducts himself like a tyrannical warlord, grating on everybody's nerves, until either they shoot him, or he kills them. Surprisingly, what Michael never realizes is neither the Philadelphia PD nor the Italians constitute his worst adversaries. No matter how belligerent Kinnaman waxes, Matthias Schoenaerts' smoldering performance as Peter enables him to overshadow his cousin throughout Guez's moody melodrama. Ryan Phillippe appears in an all-too fleeting but memorable cameo as Peter's doomed father. The flashback scenes with these two emphasizes the strong bond of love between a father and son. Guez doesn't make a spectacle out of violence in his thrillers. If you watch this movie twice, you'll notice Guez abhors contrivance, too. Nothing comes off as phony. Previously, Guez penned the underrated Jean-Claude Van Damme thriller "The Bouncer" (2018) and the ex-con drama "A Bluebird in My Heart" (2018),both about hard-luck tough guys who're no strangers to life and death violence. "Brothers By Blood" may not boast enough fire and brimstone if you're searching for a gangland outing riddled with flesh, flash, and fireworks.