Brothers | reviews, news & interviews
Brothers
Brothers
Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal duke it out on the domestic battlefield
![](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/mast_image_landscape/public/mastimages/c3562f2e9521020de502f370ac3fbe48.jpg?itok=b8mnpEaF)
Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Sam Shepard and, in a tiny role, Carey Mulligan: yes, yet again the stars are lining up to live through the agony of America's presence in Iraq and (here) Afghanistan.
It's striking that the two most critically and commercially successful recent films about US militarism have both been crowd-pleasing genre movies. One is Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, in which the big-name actors are bumped off within minutes of first appearing on screen and any moral message is buried deep in blood, sweat and explosions. The other, by Bigelow's ex-husband, James Cameron, is Avatar, whose clever palimpsest of button-pushing themes includes the imperialist shock-and-awe, fight-terror-with-terror blitz on an alien race (the dialogue references are explicit), all wrapped up in a phantasmagorical firework show of special effects.
Brothers, by contrast, isn't exactly a bad movie; just another earnest, well-intentioned chamber piece pegged on a Very Important Issue in the tradition of In the Valley of Elah or Lions for Lambs. Maguire plays Sam, the elder, responsible brother who goes missing in action, presumed dead. Gyllenhaal (pictured left) is the black sheep who, in his absence, discovers a new maturity as a replacement paterfamilias and potential lover to his wife (Portman), Shepard their hard-drinking, ex-Marine father, a grumpy, grizzled stereotype who makes no bones of the fact that he reckons the wrong brother died. Predictable tensions ensue when Sam returns (it's revealed early on that he was not dead but a prisoner of the Taliban) haunted and broken by the memory of having been forced to commit an unspeakable act to save his own life.
As Tommy usurps Sam's place, Brothers explores the delicate balance of the family, making some telling, if rather obvious points about how it imposes certain roles on its members and how the gestalt shifts when one disappears and the survivors have to negotiate new places for themselves: Sheridan has a strong track record for this sort of theme with My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father and In America. Bier's film was made in 2004 and, six years later, the story remains sadly just as relevant. In truth, though, neither version of Brothers has much interest in the big political picture. "Who are the bad guys in this?" it's asked in Sheridan's film."The ones with the beards," pipes up one of Sam's small daughters. Out of the mouths of babes....
NATALIE PORTMAN ON THEARTSDESK
Black Swan (2011). OTT, Grand Guignol, horrid, and hilariously enjoyable - it's ballet, up to a point
Your Highness (2011). Gross-out comes to medieval England. Here's hoping it bought a return ticket
No Strings Attached (2011). Natalie Portman isn't the only girl to swoon over cute Ashton Kutcher
Thor (2011). 3D graphics and 2D gods: Marvel's version of Norse myth is best when earthbound
Knight of Cups (2016). Terrence Malick's first movie shot in LA is a star-studded disappointment
Jackie (2017). One brief shining moment that was known as Camelot: how the Kennedy legacy was born
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