Review: Brothers

An adaptation of the Danish film Brodre, Brothers follows the exploits of Tommy and Sam Cahill the former a jailbird reprobate and the latter an army captain serving in Afghanistan. When Sam goes missing presumed dead, Tommy tries to change his ways and connect with Sam's wife Grace and their two young girls but things get a little too heated and the two share a brief kiss. The whole film is a little melodramatic and everything takes a little too long to sort out. Grace and Tommy are obviously going to get it on and when they do its only a brief kiss meanwhile we know that Sam is going to return to his wife and family so we are never kept in suspense at whether he will survive or not. In fact the film's only shocking moment comes during Sam's capture, other than that the film is entirely predictable.

Another problem I had was in the casting of Tobey Maguire as Sam, even though he is 34 he still looks about 20 and too young to father a ten year old girl meanwhile Natalie Portman is too glamourous and pretty to be believable as someone who has had two children. Saying that Portman is very good and seems to be having a career renaissance indeed after a few bad career choices, she seems to be back to the standard she showed in films like Closer and Garden State. The same can't be said for Maguire, whose Golden Globe nomination is a complete surprise, who is friendly at the start and completely crazy at the end. Jake Gyllenhaal is completely beliveable and compelling as Tommy and is the best of the three leads. There is also great support from Sam Shepherd and Mare Winningham as the brothers' parents and a small but powerful cameo from Carey Mulligam as the wife of another soldier.

With such a veteran director as Jim Sheridan on board I expected the film to be better and while some of the film's moments were quite entertaining for the most part I thought the emotion was too over the top and the situations too contrived for me to be ultimately satisfied.