ACTING LIKE `FOUR BROTHERS' OFF-SCREEN BONDING OF FILM'S STARS BROUGHT TRUTH TO GRITTY URBAN TALE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Mark Wahlberg encourages his ``Four Brothers'' co-star Tyrese Gibson to sing a few bars from a song the r&b artist wrote. They were inspired by the movie's most memorable, um, love scene, and Gibson, 26, is a little reluctant to give voice to the intimate words.

But like a proud sibling, 34-year-old Wahlberg reassures him that the song is great. So ...

I wanna put your body on the washing machine, Gibson warbles.

And set the timer on spin

Make sure your body's at the perfect height

So I can push my love right in

``Oh, he changed the words!'' Wahlberg shouts in mock disapproval. ``He's supposed to say ... ''

The rest is unprintable in a family newspaper. And, at a certain point, mercifully unintelligible, as both Gibson and Wahlberg crack up. It's an example of the rude-but-affectionate, pseudo-fraternal bond they and fellow actors Andre Benjamin and Garrett Hedlund created for the film.

And can't seem to shake.

``That was the key to making the movie work,'' Wahlberg says of ``Four Brothers,'' which despite being steeped in rowdy kinship, is a violent vengeance flick directed by ``Boyz N the Hood's'' John Singleton. ``We knew that we had a good script. But we knew that if we had great chemistry, guys who really just gelled well together, then we'd have a great movie.

``Thankfully, we just liked each other. We're all professionals - we could pretend like we like each other, but we honestly enjoyed each other's company. And enjoyed insulting each other.''

``Once we started hanging out and getting to know each other, nobody had egos,'' Benjamin confirms. ``So it was all cool, and the whole brother thing came about naturally. We would trip out, we would jaw on each other, we would just rag on each other.

``And it seemed like everybody fell into their role. Mark, him being the oldest brother and having the most seniority, having done the most films of anybody, he's actually one of the coolest people I've ever met in Hollywood. And me and Tyrese, we'd trip out and talk about each other, jaw on Garrett's head and hairdo, talk about each other's clothes for the film. In the movie you'll see how we got along, really.''

Wahlberg plays the unstable ex-hockey pro Bobby Mercer, who goads his younger brothers into killing the guys responsible for their foster mother's murder. He acknowledges that finally getting to act the oldest in the family was a special treat.

``Definitely true,'' the erstwhile Marky Mark says. ``But for the first time, I was also the most experienced actor on the movie. That freaked me out a little bit. But I thoroughly enjoyed being the big brother after all the torture I endured. It was definitely a guilty pleasure.''

Plus, for the first time, Wahlberg wasn't the only one taking guff for his famously large skull.

``I feel much better about my hat size because Garrett has a bigger head than I do!'' Wahlberg laughs, ``which was my main reason for campaigning for him to get the role.''

If you're getting the impression that Hedlund really got the short end of the little-brother shtick, you'd be right. But at least he was used to it.

``I've got two siblings, and I'm the youngest of them, so I could really empathize,'' says Hedlund, whose Jack Mercer is an aspiring rock guitarist the others constantly tease about being gay (which, it seems, he actually isn't). ``It wasn't too hard, considering that I had three guys that placed me as their kid brother. They really went back and forth, bantering and picking on the Jack character on and off set. Therefore, I wouldn't try to defend myself because they would only come back a little bit more.''

Not that Hedlund needed to bolster his self-esteem. That was taken care of the week before production started, when Singleton figured that the best way to get the guys' chemistry activated was having them train for a street hockey sequence. Hailing as they do from much more southern climes, Gibson and Benjamin were way out of their element.

``I grew up on skates,'' Hedlund says with smug satisfaction. ``So when I saw how uncoordinated those guys were, I was fine from then on.''

``That was a mandatory week of ice hockey training,'' ruefully recalls Gibson, who much preferred working on the laundry room encounters his military vet, Angel Mercer, has with an old flame played by Sofia Vergara. ``I had never played it before in my life. It was cold as hell, it was already, like, 40 below zero, then we had to go from outside in the cold to, like, in-house cold in the ice rink. It wasn't my favorite time.''

``From now on, when I read scripts, I'm gonna make sure to notice what season it's set in,'' adds Benjamin, who ironically plays the one character who stayed in Detroit after the brothers grew up, family man Jeremiah Mercer. ``It was so cold that a couple of shots we did, my mouth had frozen, and I couldn't even pronounce the words I was supposed to be saying.''

As for what the movie says about colorblind brotherhood, ``I think it's a really important element because it gives it an off-tilt type of thing,'' Benjamin observes. ``It's a great feat, in film, to make people believe that you actually grew up as brothers.''

``Obviously, these guys go way beyond race,'' Wahlberg figures. ``That has nothing to do with it. These are four guys who basically were abandoned, had nothing and nobody, except for this woman taking them in and then having each other. That bond is much stronger than anything. They can mess with each other as much as they want. But anybody else steps in, it's over.''

Well put for a white boy with a dubious rap past.

``He was doing what was going on at that time,'' Benjamin says with what can only be called profound brotherly forbearance. ``You had Vanilla Ice. You had MC Brains, a guy who was doing push-ups while he was rappin'. It was that whole kind of dance/hip-hop thing, and Mark was really being an entertainer at the time. That's what it was all about, so I can't s--- on it.''

Gibson agrees that busting Wahlberg on his rhyming time was one easy target he just didn't have the heart to exploit.

``No,'' Gibson says. ``The Marky Mark thing was funny. We was just always, 'What you gonna do? Show up in your Calvin Kleins?' We always went there.

``But it was more about how big his damn head was.''

Spoken like a brother you can count on.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

Meet the family

Although they're playing foster brothers from a tough section of Detroit, the actors - two black and two white - couldn't come from more diverse backgrounds.

Mark Wahlberg grew up in a working-class Boston household with eight older siblings, had trouble with the law, followed his brother Donnie into hip-hop novelty act stardom, went through an embarrassing but lucrative stint as an underwear model and has somehow morphed into a highly respected actor. His next film is Martin Scorsese's ``The Departed,'' and the hip cable show ``Entourage'' is based on his early years in Hollywood.

Andre Benjamin, an only child from Atlanta, is Andre 3000, half of the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling recording act OutKast. Also a painter and clothing designer whom Esquire magazine has dubbed the World's Best-Dressed Man, Benjamin, 30, appeared earlier this year in ``Be Cool,'' and earned most of that film's scarce critical acclaim.

South L.A.'s own Tyrese Gibson has several siblings on either side of the age divide. He, too, has had great success in music and modeling. ``Four Brothers'' is his third film for Singleton, following ``Baby Boy'' and ``2 Fast 2 Furious.'' They plan to make a big-screen version of the ``Luke Cage'' comic book next.

The baby of the group at 20, Minnesota-born Garrett Hedlund was the youngest child in his family as well. His previous film appearances include ``Troy'' and ``Friday Night Lights.''

- B.S.

CAPTION(S):

6 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) ALL 4 ONE

For the stars of `Four Brothers,' creating a fraternal bond was no act

(2) Mark Wahlberg, left, Andre Benjamin, Tyrese Gibson and Garrett Hedlund look to avenge the death of their foster mother in ``Four Brothers.''

(3) Mark Wahlberg

(4) Andre Benjamin

(5) Tyrese Gibson

(6) Garrett Hedlund

Box:

Meet the family (see text)