The first “Brother” film was made on an extremely small budget but it was such a big hit in Russia that the demand for a bigger and better sequel was there. “Brother 2” still had a small budget compared to any Hollywood film from the same period but it’s certainly looks bigger and more polished than its predecessor. While I liked the gritty realism of the first, I have to admit that parts of it were quite dull. “Brother 2” is definitely a more entertaining picture.

Danila Bagrov (Sergey Bodrov “Prisoner of the Mountains”) is in Moscow. There he finds one of his old friends from his army days during the Chechen War has been murdered. Danila learns his friend has a brother, who is a hockey player in America. The brother has got into some trouble with mobsters so Danila heads to Chicago to help resolve any issues with his very personal sense of justice.

Danila Bagrov maybe isn’t cinema’s most exciting character but he has grown on me. I liked him in the first one but I feel this second one helps to develop him even further. Like the first film, this is much slower than a lot of gangster films so we get a lot of time to know the characters rather than have tons of action. Of course, when Danila needs to kill, he does kill efficiently. Audiences outside of Russia and Eastern Europe maybe shocked at some of the racism. Some of the dialog angered parts of the Ukrainian audience.

“Brother 2” is a lot like the first one with a lot of style. I think the action sequences here are a little better than in the first one and I do like seeing Danila travel to America. His little road trip in the middle of the film is quite fun to watch. Both of these films are quite light on the violence when compared to many American gangster films such as “Scarface” and even “The Godfather”. I liked “Brother 2” and I think it’s improvement on the first.