Thai movies are getting popular these days and it's easy to understand why. Iron Ladies, Tears of the Black Tigers and Suriyothai are on the "must see" movie list of most Asian movie buffs. Brotherhood 7's quality of production is easily comparable to those other movies but this time the movie focuses on the action sequences and special effects. The movie is maybe at the basic a tribute to the Kurosawa movie, Seven Samurai and is also highly inspired by Hong Kong action movies, using a lot of over the top and exaggerated action sequences all along. But as soon as you see the very stylish intro credits you know that this movie will be an action movie of its own.

At first site, the story is really simple and it doesn't take very long to figure out what is going on and what will happen later in the movie. The evil GI group plays the bad guy and a small band of ex-military Thai soldier are coming to the rescue. But even if the story is rather simple, the movie is always fun to follow. Mixing a lot of humor, action and very unique characters, you will easily forget the rather plain story.

Did I say original characters? Characters were one of the most interesting aspects of the movie. Each one of the seven soldiers had a very unique style and personality. I don't want to describe too many things about the characters since one of the best parts of the movie is to discover them and see them evolving and overcoming their own fear during the course of the movie. As for the bad guys, most of them are played by English actors, which again looked stupid in the movie but this time it really fitted very well since it was probably intentional from the director to make them look silly. But the best bad guy was that old Thai general, who can't pull is hand out of his pocket for security reason of the people around him. That character was really good but unfortunately doesn't have a lot of screening time.

The acting was usually decent in general, but seemed a bit unprofessional in some scenes which sometime gave a feeling of cheesiness to the movie. Like in some comical scenes you could notice the actors smiling or laughing before the other actor pulled out the joke and the emotional scenes were also a bit non-credible. If the cast could have been more credible it would have given a better feel to the movie for sure.

Since the movie is categorized as an action movie, you are expecting a lot of it. On that side the movie delivers the goods and even more. The movie reminded me a lot of those 80's Hong Kong movies were the action is always done with a touch of exaggeration, something that American movie has never done until recently. Brotherhood 7 pushed that touch further with a lot of fighting, guns fights, stunts and explosion. Some of the fighting sequences are surprisingly very well done and graphically violent too but on a humoristic level only.

The production also uses some 3D digital effect to make some of these scenes. The fighting sequences using 3D were very nice but I can't say the same thing for the action sequences near the end. They had to use a blues screen that looked really cheap and the 3D models also look very fake but since the movie is not a serious action film this particularity might play in favor of the movie.

The movie uses a lot of action to entertain the audience but also feature a lot of comedy and funny situation. Action and comedy is always a great mix and Brotherhood 7 is a good example at it. The humor doesn't goes too deep in the cultural aspect so you won't have too many problems understanding the jokes. The humor doesn't fall in the slapstick genre so if you don't like slapstick humor, don't worry, there some big chance that you will enjoy the humor very much.

With a very good cinematographic value, crazy and unique characters, over the top action sequences and a lot of humor all along, Brotherhood 7 cannot be taken as a serious action movie. If you are curious about cinema from Thailand, Brotherhood 7 is a movie to check out, specially if you like the action/comedy genre.