A heartbreaking tale of the Brothers grim

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Brothers in arms: Maguire (left) and Gyllenhaal. (ALLIANCE FILMS)

The relationship between a pair of diametrically opposite brothers is utterly, heartbreakingly inverted in this drama from director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot).

Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is an army captain dutifully heading for a tour in Afghanistan, but also doing his best to fulfil his responsibilities at home with his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and his two young daughters (Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare, both charmingly natural).

One of his family obligations is to pick up his brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) from prison, where he's just served a three-year stretch for armed robbery. Tattooed, glib, and possessed of an insouciant charm, Tommy's bad boy ways have neither endeared him to Grace, nor his own father (Sam Shepard), a Vietnam vet whose love and tolerance is exclusively spent on Sam.

But while serving in Afghanistan, Sam's Blackhawk helicopter is shot down. Sam is presumed dead, and his family is promptly given the bad news.

Except Sam is not dead. He and a private, Joe Willis (Patrick Flueger) have been taken prisoner by the Taliban. Sam sternly counsels the soldier to keep quiet in the presence of his captors, with good reason, as it turns out.

Stateside, after absorbing the trauma of his brother's death, Tommy is finally bequeathed a purpose in life -- to help Grace and his two nieces get their lives into a semblance of normalcy, starting with renovating Grace's barely functional kitchen.

By the time Sam returns to the family fold, it is he who occupies the role of the volatile loose cannon while Tommy manfully does his best to keep the familial threads from unravelling.

It is an impressive dramatic inversion, but the story never shakes with the tremors of narrative contrivance.

That is mostly due to Sheridan, a director who shuns stylistic superfluity and seems naturally inclined to real sympathy for his characters.

Maguire and Gyllenhaal likewise help keep the story -- a remake of a Danish film -- fresh and organic. This movie serves to remind us how, prior to playing a certain arachnid-dude, Maguire was an adventurous, thoroughly committed young actor who radiated intensity.

Here's a timely reminder of what he can do, before Spider-Man 4 wraps him back in the hero web.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Other voices

Excerpts from reviews of Brothers.

This is a powerful, disturbing film that explores common cinematic territory -- the ability of war to destroy the individual -- without seeming clichéd or familiar.

-- James Berardinelli, ReelViews

Director Jim Sheridan's actors work with their intellects fully engaged -- and they engage us on levels we barely knew we had.

-- David Edelstein, New York magazine

This intense story of family conflict is powerful and gripping, an absolutely mesmerizing motion picture experience.

-- Pete Hammond, Boxoffice magazine

Sheridan's film is well directed and acted, but what could have been a powerful drama about the impact of war on family life turns into a middlebrow (allegorical) melodrama about brothers who are polar opposites, due to Benioff's conventional script.

-- Emanuel Levy, emanuellevy.com

Compiled by Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 4, 2009 d4