Brothers is one of those films where at a first glance all the ingredients seem to be there for a smart, emotive, serious drama that’s a tour de force, but unfortunately all the elements don’t quite pull together for Brothers.
A remake of the excellent 2005 Danish film, Brodre, initially the move to America seems as if it’s going to pay dividends. Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal play very different brothers. Maguire is Sam, a straight arrow who’s in the military and about to be shipped off to Afghanistan. Gyllenhaal is Tommy, the black sheep, recently out of prison after a term for armed robbery. After Sam goes off to war, word comes back that he’s died in a helicopter crash, and deep in grief the family tries to cope.
Sam’s wife, Grace (Natalie Portman), busies herself by concentrating on her daughters. Tommy meanwhile, who seems to be looking for some redemption and perhaps an outlet for his own grief, starts helping out around the house. Grace doesn’t really want his aid, but starts to soften.
However as Grace and Tommy grow closer, in Afghanistan Tommy isn’t dead, and is having to deal with the terrors of being held by the Taliban. When he eventually returns, he’s thrust back into an everyday world where he struggles to handle what has happened to him, especially as he suspects Tommy and Grace have been sleeping together.
Brothers is an awkward film as it’s interesting intellectually but pretty boring to watch. The whole thing comes as overwrought and the film doesn’t seem to know how to deal with the moral and social complexities of the situation it wants to explore. Director Jim Sheridan has a great reputation for character driven drama, but here he seems unsure what he wants to say about what’s going. That wouldn’t matter as much if it seemed like the film was merely exploring an immensely complex situation (as the original Danish film did, to a certain extent). Some sections are excellent. For example, Sam being held in Afghanistan is good, and Tommy and Grace’s early relationship, where they’re unsure how to deal with one another, is very interesting, but elsewhere it’s less satisfactory.
In some ways Brothers is too slick and polished, and seems to want to say something, while never quite bringing things to the boil. The huge amounts of craft on display, where it’s obvious immense care has been taken to construct this pot-boiler both visually and intellectually, actually works to the detriment of the film, as it makes a film about a messy situation look too constructed and contrived. It feels as if too many rough edges have been sanded off the story, which undermines its attempts to explore real human emotions.
Thankfully though, the performances are pretty good. While Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman are both pretty good, it’s Tobey Maguire’s film. He shows depths that he’s only hinted at before, and suggests he’s actually a far better actor than some of his previous, coasting performances have shown us. Unfortunately the trio’s good work is all to little avail, as the film never really goes anywhere and seems uncertain what it’s trying to do. The film needed more subtlety and a sense of direction, but lacking those it ends up feeling rather histrionic.
Brother is a film that feels designed with awards in mind, but it’s not likely to win many. It works better in getting you to think about what it could have been, rather than what it actually is. It hints at some of the lesser talked about aspects of war – what happens when people return from conflict, and the impact on the families – but its success is only in getting you to intellectually engage with these issues beyond what actually happens in the rather overwrought, meandering film.
Overall Verdict: Carefully constructed and with good performances, but the film lacks impact, direction and subtlety, making the whole thing rather dull and unsatisfactory.
Reviewer: Sam Bruneau
