Brothers (2009)

As I suspected, BROTHERS could not live up to my expectations, and I blame two factors for this. The first is the fact that Jim Sheridan's "In America" was not only a movie that I loved; I picked it as my favorite film of the recently-concluded decade. BROTHERS attempts to mine similar family anguish, but it feels much more paint-by-numbers this time. The second reason is the fact that I saw "The Messenger" first. That film, by a first-time director, follows a similar home-front story but explores much more genuine, much deeper emotional depths.

I wonder if the secret is Samantha Morton, the wonderful actress who played the mother in "In America" and a new widow in "The Messenger." Too bad there was no role for her in BROTHERS.

Based on a Danish film of the same name, Sheridan's brothers, I'm told, closely follows the original film about two brothers, one who follows in dad's footsteps and joins the Marines to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the other who ends up in jail, the opposite of his brother and father in his inability to discipline himself. Here, Tobey Maguire is the military brother and Jake Gyllenhaal the screw-up. Caught in the cross-fire is Sam's (Maguire) wife, Grace, played by Natalie Portman, and their two daughters.

The best part about BROTHERS is, really, stuff that Sheridan excells at, and that's the moments of family dynamics in flux. In a fantastically tense and complex dinner table scene, for instance, a newly-released-from-prison Tommy (Gyllenhaal) is barely welcomed home by his emotionally detatched father, well-played by Sam Shepard. The always-good Mare Winningham is the boys' step-mother, and we sense the subtext that the marriage between dad Hank and his first wife, the boys' mother, was ruined by his changed psyche post-Vietnam the way the marriage between Sam and Grace will be strained by Sam's time in Iraq.

As hard as it tries, though, I'm not sure that BROTHERS had much new to say about the phenomena of post-traumatic stress disorder. I'm not sure, as much as Maguire spookily transformed into Travis Bickle by the time the film reaches it's powerful climax (as previewed in the film's trailer), that the subtext of the movie brought out that much more about how those who don't go to war can't possibly relate to what soldiers who have fought have seen.

And that's a shame, because the pieces are all there. Here, Sam is reported dead, and brother Tommy, doing his best to get on the straight and narrow, starts to fill in for his brother as a father-figure to Sam's two little girls. Grace, who never liked Tommy, is warming up to him, thanks to the positive improvements he's made in his life and the little things he does to help her out. Sadly, when Sam returns home, alive after having been a prisoner of the Taliban forced to partake in unthinkable acts to secure his release, we see that the family learned to get along fine without him. The girls have accepted Tommy as a new dad and Grace begins to grapple with different feelings for him.

Something about the way the script was written caused me to feel bad for the family that Sam was back, instead of feeling joy. So dark is Maguire's performance and so unhappy are the girls that Sam's return looks like a party crashing. The tone is instantly heavy, a cloud of distrust descends immediately as Sam speculates that Tommy has moved in on his territory - his wife - in the physical sense. In a true moment of heartbreak, yet again at the dinner table, one of the daughters is forced to admit that Sam's return has screwed things up for all of them, that they were good with Tommy instead of their father. I hate to say it, but I don't think you can blame her. There is nothing to like about Sam. Nothing at all.

Gyllenhaal is probably the best of the three leads here; his performance is natural and conflicted and quietly believable and has lots of range to it. Portman is good but seems to not have been asked to do much in the film. Sometimes she feels like little more than a prop or plot device. And Maguire, though certainly intense, is so good at playing shellshocked that I couldn't buy him in the tender moments when his character spent time with his daugthers prior to deploying. Best of all in this film, however, are the two little girls. Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare are just heartbreaking as Isabelle and Elsie. They remind me, in fact, of the similar impact the two daughters had in "In America."

BROTHERS is by no means a bad film. Actually, it's quite good. It's just a let-down to me, a bit of a disappointment largely of my own making because my expectations were likely too high. There are still plenty of moments to discover and discuss in the film, such as how the behavior of Hank prior to where the film's story begins has affected the family structure, and Sheridan's sly storytelling choices, like letting the audience wonder right along with Sam as to whether or not Grace and Tommy consummated their relationship. The war torture scenes were equally intense and engaging.

Still, for all of these compliments that I have, I was left with the feeling that these great little pieces in BROTHERS didn't add up to enough. Sheridan remains a master at telling intense stories about families, but maybe he's better when those ideas are his own and not someone else's.

3.0 out of 4