Based on author Pete Dexter's family-crime novel Brotherly Love, Jérémie Guez's Brothers by Blood explores how families inherit each other's pain and pride. Guez's film centers its gritty tale on Peter Flood (Matthias Schoenaerts) and his cousin Michael (Joel Kinnaman) as they navigate being a part of their family's criminal business. As Peter grapples with what this lifestyle has cost him personally -- the destruction of his own immediate family -- his cousin Michael rises through the ranks, thirsting for power and respect, no matter the cost.
Actor Joel Kinnaman (The Suicide Squad, The Secrets We Keep) discussed with CBR what drew him to playing Michael and how the set of Brothers by Blood felt playful around fellow co-star Matthias Schoenaerts (The Old Guard, Red Sparrow).
CBR: What do you think was the most compelling part about playing Michael?
Joel Kinnaman: Yeah, it was kind of a flashy role in the way that I read it. I was like, "Oh, wow, this is great, you know, this kind of a dream role, playing a guy bordering on sociopathy." But, at the center of it, it's this very tender and longing relationship to his brother. And, I mean, that's sort of the path that I chose with the character.
At its core, the sort of the spine of Michael was getting acceptance from his brother, and, and the less acceptance he got, the more he would act out. And then him being the leader of this crime organization makes a lot of other people very affected by his acting out. But that's also what I loved about the script and the style of filmmaking that Jérémie -- the director -- applied to this. He really didn't want to make it glorifying gangster life or violence in the way that, really, the mob world as a backdrop. And them being in crime is an accelerant for the drama. But the film really is a family drama between these two brothers that are sort of victims of their father's sins, and just perpetuating this downward spiraling cycle. And, yeah, it was a great, great opportunity to jump into something that felt profound but was very small in scale.
Yeah, I was really curious what you thought motivated Michael to go deeper and deeper into crime. It sounds like you kind of hinted at that, that it had a lot to do with acceptance, but I would love to hear your take...
Kinnaman: I mean, I think for one, it's what he knows. It's the family business. And then I think that he's always looking to his brother for acceptance and for validation. And because Peter is like, moving away from that world, seeing the ugliness and the human toll that it's taking. He has a completely different sensibility as a human being and has a much different relationship to compassion and empathy than Michael does. So I think for Michael, the more he dives deeper, the more he's trying to do, the more power he's trying to assume, the more he's pushing Peter away. But instead of going that way [getting closer], it almost feels like [Michael's] acting out.
Yeah, I think that is the heart of the film. The more Michael gets power, he thinks Peter is going to be closer to him but drives him further away. Watching those two power struggles play against each other is really rad. So, what was the hardest thing about portraying Michael?
Kinnaman: When I first read the script, I really felt like, "Wow, this is a fantastic role." And it kind of terrified me, because I also came into this project with pretty short notice. I didn't have long at all to prepare for this character. And there's one thing when you get a dream role you don't want to get it wrong.
And also, you know, he's got a Philly accent, and there are all these aspects to the character that makes it a higher difficulty level. But talking to Jérémie on the phone, just realizing on what wavelength he was at, I just realized that I grew up with a guy that just was Michael. So I could base basically my whole performance on that guy.
And, then when we were in the costume fitting, I'd already started to sort of play around with it. Jérémie was so good with the clothes. He was so involved and so right away I felt everything I put on me just felt right. And all of a sudden I found, his posture and the way that he walked, and how he related physically to other people. I would look at people like I was always gaming the situation, you know? Survey how he can get an angle, how he can find a weakness and that whole sort of mentality. So I was relieved, in one way, because it clicked really quickly. And so even on the first day, first take, I was like full-blast and didn't hold back at all.
What was it like working so closely in scenes with Matthias Schoenaerts?
Kinnaman: With Matthias, you know, having a counterpart that is in my opinion, one of the great actors of our generation. I love him. I was super stoked to play with him. And he was also super hospitable when I came to Antwerp. You know, we shot a bunch of it in his hometown.
Oh, cool!
Kinnaman: Yeah, you know this where you go to shoot for stand-in Philly, Antwerp, Belgium. [Laughs.]
[Laughs.]
Kinnaman: But, yes. when you have a guy like that who doesn't have an ounce of insecurity or jealousy in him -- you can run into these sort of insecure fellows every now and then, that feels like they're afraid that you're gonna upstage them or something like that, just silliness, insecurities. But with Matthias, you have a guy that's just realizing like, "Oh, this is gonna be fun!"
And then, me and him met, and it was like when you were little kids at the playground, and you found someone that was good at playing. Like, "Oh, man, we're gonna have fun!" And that's how it was with me and Matthias. We just hit it off and we had fun and we played. It felt like we just played the whole time. It felt seamless when the cameras were rolling, and when it wasn't, we just had this flow. And yeah, it was a great matchup for us. Jérémie just has a really special eye and a sensibility of this world.
What is the one thing that you think Jérémie did with this film that is just a different approach to a family crime movie?
Kinnaman: Well, I think his approach was that he was never tempted to make it a gangster movie or a crime movie or to lean into making the violence spectacular and exciting in that way. He grew up in a rough world too. So he knows these kinds of characters, he knows the price you pay for making those kinds of choices, and also the price that the people around them pay. And I think Jérémie has too much respect for that, for that human toll to try to make it into something glitzy and in that way. I don't think he was ever really interested in that. He was using it as a backdrop, a dramatic accelerant for the characters, but it was always about getting to the bottom of the relationship between these characters like peeling off the layers of the onions of these characters, trying to find what was hidden? What was hidden underneath the surface?
Written and directed by Jérémie Guez, Brothers by Blood stars Matthias Schoenaerts, Joel Kinnaman, Maika Monroe, Paul Schneider, Nicholas Crovetti and Ryan Phillippe. The film is now playing in select theatres and available on VOD.