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Father, son struggle to make amends in 'Brahmin Bulls'

<b>Mini-review: 'Brahmin Bulls'</b>

"Brahmin Bulls," Los Angeles director Mahesh Pailoor's first feature, makes for a sincere but forced drama about an estranged father and son struggling for common ground as they vent a laundry list of old wounds seeking salve.

While attending an L.A. convention for engineering educators, widowed Boston professor Ashok (Roshan Seth) crashes at the pad of his cat-discarding kid Sid (Sendhil Ramamurthy), a pot-smoking, immature, 28-year-old failing architect whose wife has abandoned him before her biological time clock alarm sounds.

Sid is handsome, but narcissistic, and he harbors ill-will toward Dad who had an affair with his own teaching assistant while his wife lay dying of disease. (Wait! His former T.A., played by the lovely Mary Steenburgen, is speaking at the convention. You don't suppose ...?)

Seth, Ramamurthy and Steenburgen pump lots of life into their characters. But "Brahmin Bulls" still resembles a testosterone-heavy drama worthy of its own Lifetime Channel slot.

At the beginning, we watch Sid unceremoniously dump his wife's cat named Maggie (a Tennessee Williams reference?) on the roadside miles from his house. Sid has a lot of work to do if an audience can ever accept him. Yet, he remains too juvenile and self-centered.

The screenplay (by Pailoor and wife Anu Pradhan) gives us an overdose of tennis matches - both metaphorical and literal, sledgehammered internal summaries (graffiti on a urinal calls Sid a nickname for a "Richard"), and an obligatory happy ending every bit as incredulous as Maggie the cat finding her way home through L.A.

"Brahmin Bulls" opens at the South Barrington 30 Theaters. Not rated; for mature audiences. 96 minutes. ★ ★ ½

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