2024's The Menendez Brothers is a documentary about those two Menendez bros (Lyle and Erik) who killed their parents in 1989 and have been spending the last 35 years in jail for their heinous crimes. "It was like an incredible soap opera." True dat.
"Brothers", well it has present-day interviews from Lyle and Erik that seem cerebral if not effete and put on. The flick looks like a solid print however, showing tons of archives intertwined with more accounts from other people too, like the bitter prosecutor, the news writers, jury members, and various Menendez kin. I mean you don't see the actual Menendez boys but you get their voices, all grainy and graveled and well, spent.
So yeah, The Menendez Brothers as a docu is an enigma, a puzzler if you will. Why? Well I'm age 50 and all I know about these dudes is that they offed their loved ones in cold blood and then got a life sentence 7 years later. I guess I'm now getting some more insight as to why. Was their dad (Jose Menendez) an actual child molester? Did they commit these blood-soaked murders as a form of self-defense? Should they have gotten charged with manslaughter? And did they do it for the inheritance money ($14 mil is um, a lot of moolah)?
Questions questions questions and "Brothers" teeters on the edge of answering them. It's a little bit of Forensic Files, a little Dateline, a whole lot of Netflix, and some timeline remnants of that B-ball swipe called The Last Dance (if you can believe that). Director Alejandro Hartmann keeps the storytelling clean even if his narrative is a little long-winded and forcefully opinionated (revert back to second paragraph). His Menendez Brothers is a fascinating if not icky and sort of fallacious watch. Hey, it's been a long, long time "broheim".
Written by Jesse Burleson
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