Sunday, December 6, 2009
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Sunday, December 6, 2009
MOVIE REVIEW
Brothers
A War Within And Between Brothers
Fraternal fractures, posterized:
Tobey Maguire as Sam Cahill, Natalie Portman as Grace Cahill and Jake Gyllenhaal
as Tommy Cahill in Jim Sheridan's "Brothers", based on Susanne Bier's 2004 film.
Lionsgate
By
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
Sunday, December 6, 2009
"Brothers", based on the 2004 Danish film written by Anders Thomas Jensen and
Susanne Bier and directed by Ms. Bier, should have been a more effective and
complex film than it is. Jim Sheridan, who depicted intensity and moral
conflict so persuasively in films like "My Left Foot" and "In The Name Of The
Father" directs this American edition tightly, yet his latest lacks credibility
by overblowing a key element of plot to justify the rage of a character,
trivializing the themes and issues presented.
Not exactly self-sabotage, but close enough.
Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is a decorated U.S. marine deployed to Afghanistan in
2007. His diaries to his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) are Hallmark cards
of pure love. His slack-jawed younger brother and jailbird Tommy (Jake
Gyllenhaal) gets drunk and has a hair-trigger temper. Grace is keeping the
family together with her two daughters. Sam's helicopter unit in
Afghanistan goes missing when shot out of the sky and are presumed dead,
including Sam. The Cahills get the sad news but Grace doesn't believe or
feel it. Women's intuition tells her that Sam is alive and well, but she's
only half right.
Sexual tension abounds between Grace and Tommy while Sam is away and when
apparently resurrected he's inclined to think that some hanky panky has
transpired. From there things quickly spiral out of control. The
actors try too hard to convince us that turmoil has wrecked the family and Mr.
Sheridan works so amply hard to convey the tormented state of Mr. Maguire's
character that the results not only feel forced but also fall flat, taking the
messy moral impulses in the characters combined with the horrors of war and
quickly disposing of both to conveniently reach a resolution. By the end
you wonder if the film has made a big deal out of a whole lot of nothing.
Despite palpable tension and eruptions of anger during "Brothers" Mr. Sheridan
telegraphs how we should view Sam before Mr. Maguire can do anything interesting
with the character. Instead of a nuanced, tormented soldier Sam is a
one-dimensional tinder-box looking for any internal fuse to be lit, even if such
isn't Mr. Maguire's intention. Sam is comfortable doing his best Jim
Morrison "c'mon baby light my fire" imitation and Mr. Maguire does what he can
to be effective in increments of both crescendo and silence, even if he and the
film feel forced.
Ms. Portman tries but doesn't possess the gravitas to make Grace any more than
an item of bait to move along a sterile screenplay by David Benioff ("25th
Hour"). The only member of the principal actor trio who doesn't force his
hand is Mr. Gyllenhaal, who as Tommy is simply trying to squeeze his way back
into a family circle that has a fraternal fracture. He's the one character
who supplies comic relief, gaining a renewed lease on life in a film worn down
by pathos.
With: Sam Shepard, Mare Winningham, Patrick Flueger, Carey Mulligan, Taylor
Geare, Bailee Madison, Clifton Collins, Jr., Ethan Suplee, Omid Abtani, Navid
Nagahban and Arron Shiver.
"Brothers" is rated R by the Motion Picture
Association Of America for language and some disturbing violent content. The film's running time is
one hour and 50 minutes.
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