90% My Brother The Devil

All Critics (40) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (36) | Rotten (4)

A story of brothers that's both tough and tender.

"My Brother the Devil" is a promising debut that marks El Hosaini as a filmmaker to watch, but one still very much in the developmental stages.

For at least part of its length, "My Brother the Devil" brings refreshing changes to a genre badly in need of them.

Nuances of faith, politics and sexual identity enrich what initially presents as a classic good son-bad son tale, and although the film's melting-pot patois is occasionally too dense to decipher, we get the gist.

El Hosaini fights the conventions of the brotherly gangster melodrama, but the conventions win.

It's far superior to what usually comes out of the British slums in the genre of gangland thrillers.

Ultimately feels a little flat, but there's promise that the director will carry on to stronger work, with several scenes here delivering exceptional grace and texture that all but guarantees a bright cinematic future.

Sally El Hosaini shows a deft hand in her story telling and direction belying her inexperience behind the camera.

When a both a dog and friend of Rashid's are killed in a violent gang encounter, El Hosaini frames both of their lifeless bodies on the street in a powerful image that tells of two innocents both bred to fight.

[El Hosaini] has a devil of a time getting a handle on this complicated story.

Familiar youth crime/coming-of-age framework, novel setting and focus group.

El Housani's freshman effort is certainly visually accomplished, but there's precious little meat on its bones.

Highly recommended. (Writer-director) El Hosaini handles the various volatile relationships within the film with intelligence and sensitivity.

An engrossing debut from director Sally El Hosaini, My Brother the Devil is as authentic, emotionally complex and powerfully acted as any film you'll see this year.

Unsure performances and some decades-old gangster-film stereotypes hamper this acute, beautifully shot portrait of Egyptian teenagers fighting to survive in a rough London neighborhood.

With My Brother the Devil, writer-director Sally El Hosaini tells a story both operatic in its implications and quotidian in its sensory, day-to-day details.

It's refreshing to see a new generation reinterpret the classics. James Cagney would be proud.

There probably aren't too many Welsh-Egyptian writer-directors like newcomer Sally El Hosaini. But she's clearly representative of a new kind of diversity in modern Britain. And one which bodes well for its filmmaking future.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/my_brother_the_devil_2012/

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