‘Brothers’ Review

Release Date – 12/4/2009

Captain Sam Cahill is a Marine. He lives to serve his country even though his family doesn’t like to see him go away for long periods of time. Tommy Cahill is his brother, a lifelong screw up who just got out of prison. On Sam’s recent tour of Afghanistan, his helicopter is shot down and he is captured and tortured by the enemy. Presumed dead, his family mourns while Tommy takes care of Sam’s wife Grace and their two little girls. During this time, Tommy turns his life around and gets a lot closer to Grace. Then Sam is rescued and returns home, but he’s not the same person who left. This movie is pretty damn fantastic. A nice mixture of a family drama and a war movie. Great acting all around and I was really into it from beginning to end.

Tobey Maguire is really the stand out here as Sam. He goes from a fun loving father and husband to a complete head case. I’ve never seen him act the way he does in this movie. He looks completely nuts with just facial expressions and blank stares. This is no Spider-man. This is some serious acting. And his slimmed down, almost lanky, physique adds to the creepiness. Jake Gyllenhaal is great in this too as Tommy. He always relied on his brother to be the rock of the family but now he has to grow up and take some responsibility. He goes from the drunk, scary uncle to a lovable, fun one. Sam’s girls eventually like him more than their father which causes a lot of problems. Its cool how Tobey and Jake’s characters do a complete 180. Its pretty clever writing. Natalie Portman does another fine job as Sam’s wife Grace. Just like the others, she has some emotional scenes, that she definitely pulls off. After a few less than stellar outings, with this role she cements herself yet again as one of the best working actresses today. What was actually surprising about the acting was the performances from the two kids. The older daughter (Bailee Madison) who was probably only 10 years old had some really emotional scenes as well and she pulled them off flawlessly, quivering lip and all. I really believed that this little girl was upset about her daddy. Like I said already, the acting was great all around.

A pleasant surprise in the plot was the inclusion of the scenes in Afghanistan. From the trailers, I thought Sam was just going to show up rescued one day and wreak havoc on his family but we actually see him in captivity a few times. I would have liked to see more of the mental distress that causes him to go nuts but the movie was getting a bit long so they probably did a good job in limiting those scenes. The relationship between Tommy and Grace is truly believable and there’s something inside of you that wants to see them end up together, but then you think its just wrong to do that to a brother. Its probably the exact effect that director Jim Sheridan (Get Rich or Die Tryin) was going for. The film was a remake of the 2004 Swedish film Brodre, adapted by writer David Benioff (X-Men Origins: Wolverine). So the director of the 50 Cent movie and writer of the latest Wolverine dud collaborate for a fine motion picture. Maybe they should stick to teaming up because they just created a MADE movie!

IMDB – N/A
Rotten Tomatoes – 63%
Movie Wiseguys – 8.5/10