A New Action Comedy With Josh Brolin & Peter Dinklage Is A Prime Video Hit

Netflix might be the biggest streamer in the game, but it's not entirely without competition. While the company has around 282 million subscribers, Amazon's Prime Video service isn't too far behind with 230 million users. Are a large contingent of those people just Amazon customers who happen to have a Prime Video account by virtue of signing up to the company's fast delivery service? Yes. Still, it's not as if Amazon's platform hasn't earned the right to challenge Netflix for streaming supremacy.

Prime Video has given us some standout hits such as the stellar video game adaptation "Fallout," and is, of course, home to the sweeping fantasy series "Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power." Are there also a few duds mixed in? Well, yes. Just take a look at the Bourne ripoff without an identity, "Citadel." But this is streaming after all, which requires a constant, er, stream of "content" to maintain itself, so there's bound to be some misses amid the hits.

Of course, in the topsy-turvy world of streaming, even critical misses can become huge hits. Just take a look at Prime Video's "Brothers," for example. This Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage-starring action comedy did not fare well with critics at all upon its debut. The film, directed by Max Barbakow ("Palm Springs"), arrived in theaters October 10, 2024, before hitting the streaming service on October 17. Unfortunately, this buddy comedy currently holds a critic score of just 44% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 5.6 out of 10. On the other hand, if you take a look at the Prime Video most-watched charts, "Brothers" is absolutely dominating.

"Brothers" sees Josh Brolin play Moke Munger, a reformed criminal whose settled life is thrown into disarray when his twin brother, Jady (Peter Dinklage), shows up begging Moke to help him pull off a heist. The resulting hijinks didn't exactly impress critics, yet the Prime Video crowd seems to be loving Brolin and Dinklage's antics. 

According to streaming data aggregator FlixPatrol, "Brothers" is the number one most-watched movie in the United States on Prime Video as of October 21, 2024. It's not just Americans that are enjoying the Dinklage/Brolin team-up either. At the time of writing, "Brothers" is number one in 29 countries around the world, and has been in the top spot for four days straight in Canada, Iceland, and New Zealand. It also looks poised to take the number one position in a further 20 countries, making the film a global Prime Video success.

Whether "Brothers" can maintain its success remains to be seen but in order to defend the number one position, the film will need to fend off competition from crime drama "Killer Heat" and Prime Video romance "Blue Cave" in the second and third spots, respectively. Either way, this is clearly a strong debut for "Brothers," which thus far, hasn't seen much success elsewhere.