Another Movie Guide

“Brothers” Movie Review

“Brothers” (My 0-10 rating: 7)

Genre: Drama, War.

Director: Jim Sheridan

Screenplay: David Benioff

Cast: Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Sam Shepard, Mare Winningham

Time: 1 hr., 50 min.

Rating: R (romance intimacy, vulgarity, some disturbing violence, torture)

Powerful theme, major moral questions, but marred somewhat by uneven dramatic pacing.

“Brothers,” in timely fashion, is the first film to deal with the effects of the Afghanistan war on our Marines. Hesitate before going to see it due to a few scenes of mind-bending atrocity.

As long as the film is into its sequences of anger and fury, it’s horrendously well done. When, however, it tries to develop its essential intimacies in love relationships it suffers from stop-and-go momentum which abruptly slows its progression. Still, no doubt about it, its basic atrocity hook in the sequence depicting the barbaric and inhumanly savage punishments exacted by the Taliban (shot in Abiquiu, New Mexico) is so mind-shattering that I heard and felt the audience gasp and cringe in every part of the theater.

This is Tobey Maguire’s deepest and broadest role ever, and he accomplishes it with a commendably studied finesse. He clearly wants you to suffer his anguish and humiliation with him. You’re to be no passive observer in this. Add, in no lesser energy, the absorbing performance by Jake Gyllenhaal and the film overcomes its shortfalls.

Supported by flawlessly impactful performances at all adult and child roles, the ugly ironies of war achieve a uniqueness when one homecoming Marine carries within his embattled psyche a memory of trauma so catastrophic that he’s a walking blockbuster. Natalie Portman, playing his wife, and Sam Shepard, as his father, roll with and against his force in a dynamic that keeps you glued.

Thirtysomething Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire), loving husband to his high school sweetheart Grace (Natalie Portman) and devoted father to two young girls, is facing his fourth tour of duty as a Marine, this one to Afghanistan. And into this emotion-laden scene in suburbia now arrives Tommy Cahill (Jake Gyllenhaal), Sam’s younger brother. While Sam has always been the very model of the responsible family man and dutiful soldier, Tommy, just released from jail, is an aimless drifter, the exact opposite to Sam in every way.

But Tommy is also the life-of-the-party in any social situation. He’s a provocateur, insensitive perhaps, but nonetheless the center of charm with his adroit wit and roguish personality. And he’s into that very role now on his first night of freedom, moving into prominence at Sam’s farewell dinner in the presence also of their parents, Elsie (Mare Winningham) and Hank Cahill (Sam Shepard), himself a retired Marine. It’s more than plain that Hank is contemptuous of Tommy.

Soon comes the drama. On a mission in Afghanistan, Sam’s chopper is shot down in the bleak and remote mountains. Sam is officially presumed dead. Back at home, his family is just receiving the full shock of being told of this catastrophe, facing the inevitable stark emptiness within themselves.

Tommy feels a surge of family loyalty and responsibility, now stepping forth to shelter Grace and the children under his wings, to say nothing of how he must now face himself.

But as fate would have it, Sam is not dead. Having been captured by the Taliban in the foreboding Pamir Mountains, Sam is barely surviving, mentally and physically, under the horrendous traumas of his captivity in which the Taliban captors force him to do an unimaginable act. So that even as he is being de-humanized and mentally changed forever, his brother Tommy is gaining character strength back home.

In fact, Grace and Tommy are getting into each other. Once regarding each other coldly, now they find themselves in shame and wariness over their mutual attraction. But, especially in regards to Tommy’s wonderful rapport with her kids, it is happening.

Predictably, of course, the climax will build over what’s to happen when Sam comes home. For Sam, who’s become withdrawn and explosive in his time of captivity, harbors immediate suspicion of an attraction between Tom and Grace.

The energy of this family have changed strikingly. Loyalty, love and masculinity are now on the line. And a mind shattered.

Again, caution, should you elect to see this movie. As to what effect it may have on our resolve in the coming troop surge in Afghanistan, there’s a real question as to whether the American public will rise and demand hard action against the grotesquely ugly Taliban, or, will say Let’s Get Out!

Marty Meltz, http://www.martymoviereviews.com, was the 30-year movie critic for the statewide Award-winning Maine Sunday Telegram until the column’s termination for budget cuts at end of 2007.