Joe Tufano
I've only watched this one time because it's not something you can watch over and over again, but this is a film that shows a side of the military that we don't really like to know exists. United States Marine Corps Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) goes missing while on deployment in Afghanistan, reported killed in action and his family back home try to adjust to his absence. His wife Grace (Natalie Portman) tries to care for her children with the help of her husband's brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is the opposite of his brother Sam. They soon develop intimate feelings towards one another but only go as far as sharing a kiss. Sam is discovered to be alive and returns home, but is clearly traumatized by his experiences. I won't say what they are, but that combined with Sam noticing the looks shared between his wife and brother cause him to have a huge emotional break down. The premise is nothing entirely original, the film's real strength is it's three lead actors. Natalie Portman is really great at playing the military wife who tries to care for her family and support her husband as best as she can, Gyllenhaal is really good as Tommy who redeems himself in his family's eyes since he did time in jail. I'm not a huge fan of Jake Gyllenhaal, but think he's a very talented actor and like I said is really good here. And lastly, the frequently and unfairly maligned Tobey Maguire sells the hell out of it and arguably gives the best performance out the entire cast. I've always liked Maguire as an an actor prior to this movie with his run as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Red Pollard in Seabiscuit and Homer Wells in Cider House Rules, but this is probably the best performance I've ever seen from him and that I think is Oscar worthy. As someone who is in the US military even though I've never seen combat, I've met a few people in the service who you can tell have been in combat because of the look in their eyes. And Maguire does that perfectly. And I've never really got the hate towards Tobey Maguire as an actor either. Seriously guys, leave him alone! While the premise is nothing entirely original, it's a very effect drama that shows the effects of war on those who serve in the war and their families, and it benefits from strong performances by it's three leads, especially Tobey Maguire.
Steve Pulaski
Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is a Marine captain that has readjusted to his homelife after being deployed to Afghanistan three times now and is about to do his fourth turn of duty within the coming days. Sam has a wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and two beautiful young daughters, Isabelle and Maggie (Bailee Madison and Taylor Grace Geare), whom he loves deeply but hates to leave every few months on relatively short notice. His brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) has just been released from prison after armed robbery, and Tommy's relationship with their father Hank (Sam Shepard) could not be more distant and contentious, especially seeing how Sam is following in Hank's footsteps of serving his country rather than serving time.Sam is deployed back to Afghanistan in October 2007, but is involved in a helicopter crash, leading news to come back to Grace from Marines saying Sam and several others are now presumed dead. She is obviously heartbroken, as well as her children who need to adjust from having an erratically-present father to no father at all. "Is daddy dead like your mom and dad," one of Sam's daughters asks her mother before the funeral. In a time of grief and mental-exhaustion, Tommy looks to help Grace with the kids and the housework, as well as providing Grace with a person to lean on. In reality, Sam is alive but is taken hostage, along with another Private, by a violent Afghanistan militia. When Sam finally returns home after committing an atrocity, he is stricken with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms and becomes much more withdrawn from life and out of touch with reality, resorting to strange behavior and explosive episodes of rage and fear.Based off Susan Bier's Brødre, a Danish film, Jim Sheridan's Brothers effectively details, even if in a brazen, melodramatic way, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder amongst our servicemen, and is commanded largely by Maguire, whose screen presence here is powerful and extremely effective. Maguire is up to a grave challenge in this picture, unlike any he has faced as an actor. Very often in the third act must Maguire play detached and cold to the world, which is more than just staring off into space and acting a bit out of the loop. Maguire shows us through his blank stares, dead eyes that are often fixated on something yet nothing, and careful, specific mannerisms that something doesn't feel or look right, making his explosive tirades all the more brutal and harsh. The final twenty minutes of Brothers are some of the finest scenes of Maguire's entire acting career in the way they evoke violent behavior and emotional-overload without being too far-fetched or comedic. You've simply never seem Maguire like you do in the final twenty minutes of Brothers.Gyllenhaal does some exceptional work here too, playing a deadbeat man trying to do right when it seems he can only do wrong. He is the subject of terrible criticism from his father, who views him as nothing more than a waste of a human heart the way he has gotten into trouble and doesn't have the courage or the interest in holding a job and trying to make a decently successful living. Gyllenhaal's scenes with Portman, who we can see tries hard to overcome the battered, distraught woman role, have a pleasant tenderness to them, thanks to the sensitivity Sheridan chooses to capture them with. Sheridan doesn't take advantage of neither performer here, and makes their scenes together shine, particularly one set in a basement with music which makes for a smoothly-conducted dramatic scene. And let us not forget the performances of both of the young child actresses, Madison and Geare, who steal nearly every scene they're in, especially Madison, who has found a way to simultaneously look cute and aware of the heavy circumstances in her family's life.Clearly, Brothers is a film that relies and gets by almost entirely on its performances, leaving David Benioff's screenplay and its contents to sort of take a backseat. Unfortunately, it is difficult to overlook the fact that Benioff has written a screenplay that is often rushed and never really develops its subjects. In the beginning, Sam is only home a depressingly short time before he is quickly shipped back off to Afghanistan before he becomes missing and presumed dead. The film relies on a brief dinner scene between Sam's family as its means for backstory and character development, and mainly uses it to show Sam's father's contention with Tommy. Never do we get a good idea as to what Sam's past tours of duty were like and in what way they affected him. While we never get to know Sam before he became heavily involved with the military, we can tell that perhaps the services had an effect on his mental state, seeing as his movements seem to be very specific and accurate, but in a lesser sense than what they become later.This lack of development sort of derails Brothers in the regard that by the time Sam is mentally-damaged, we still don't have a real grasp on his personality nor his life before combat. Because of this, Brothers feels impersonal at the same time personal, seeing as we are always fixated on this family and how the war has affected not just Sam but his wife, brother, parents, and children as well. What Benioff does do well is make a strong case for the horrifying effects of PTSD and how they can destroy much more than tangible items thanks to fits of rage, and for that, the film is definitely commendable. It isn't until we dig past the surface that we realize that the film doesn't really do all that it could to give us a long-lasting impact.Starring: Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Bailee Madison, Taylor Grace Geare, Sam Shepard, Patrick Flueger, Clifton Collins, Jr., and Mare Winningham. Directed by: Jim Sheridan.
