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Web-Exclusive Review: Brothers

Alternative Press - Tim Karan on 12/4/09 @ 10:49 AM - altpress.com

DRAMA
BROTHERS (Lionsgate)
STARS > Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Sam Shepard
DIRECTOR > Jim Sheridan
RATING > 2.5/5
OPENS > DEC 4

As awkward scenarios go, it doesn't get much worse than the one presented in Brothers. After being told that her husband, Sam (Maguire), a U.S. marine, has been killed in Afghanistan, Grace Cahill (Portman) finds solace in Sam's ex-con brother Tommy (Gyllenhaal), who quickly becomes a kind of surrogate father to Sam's kids. Trouble is, Sam isn't actually dead. And when he returns home after months as a POW, he is a very different man than the one who left for war. Battered, emaciated and overwhelmed with guilt about his conduct in captivity, Sam is deeply suspicious of Grace and Tommy's new relationship. Slowly but surely, his distrust and grief fracture into dementia and, eventually, violence.

Given the plot synopsis--an adaptation of Danish director Susanne Bier's 2004 film Brødre--we were prepared for Brothers to be a profoundly depressing film, and parts of it are undeniably so. But director Jim Sheridan sullies the inherent gravitas--a gravitas not unlike the kind that bolstered his three films with Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot, The Boxer, In The Name Of The Father)--with some predictable dialogue, a schmaltzy ending and a pair of ultra-maudlin U2 songs so prominently situated that their inclusion is tantamount to shameless product placement (how often do song titles make it into the opening credits?). Combined with the fact that Sheridan never really develops most of the characters, it's difficult to view Brothers as anything other than a missed opportunity for just about everyone involved except Maguire and the always-excellent Sam Shepard (as the brothers' alcoholic and similarly war-scarred father), who carry this film on their backs like it was their own newborn son. Of course, releasing a serious drama in December is blatant Oscar-baiting, and it'd be surprising if Maguire didn't at least get a nomination for his performance as the skeletal, wild-eyed, post-POW version of his character. (He'd deserve it, too.)

There's another upshot worth mentioning, though: If diluting the storyline's boundless capacity for darkness (Maguire's character doesn't go nearly as far off the deep end as Hollywood's past cavalcade of shattered vets--see Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter, Ed Harris in Jacknife or even Stallone in First Blood), while keeping the film's implicit anti-war theme intact, results in the kind of broader appeal that makes anyone think twice about a career in America's armed services, Sheridan will have done his job admirably. --J. Bennett

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