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Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire), left, re-connects with his black sheep brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) in “Brothers.” |
There’s not a single false emotional note in Jim Sheridan’s lean and spare war drama “Brothers.”
The performances of the entire cast – especially Tobey Maguire and the girls who play his two children – are tight and contained.
That is, until they explode. When they do, their outbursts are not Hollywood showboating, but organic expressions of pain and frustration forcefully escaping from emotional pressure cookers.
“Brothers” is an English remake of Susanne Bier’s 2005 Danish war drama, but to American baby boomers, it will probably recall the Vietnam War drama “Coming Home,” starring Jon Voight and Jane Fonda in a familiar story of a left-behind soldier’s wife falling for another military man when her husband leaves, first physically, then emotionally.
Sheridan’s movie packs none of the heavy-handed, anti-war preachiness of “Coming Home.” Actually, “Brothers” isn’t even about the war in Afghanistan per se.
But it does deal directly with the real costs of war. Not the easy-to-count monetary costs of bullets and vehicles, but the intangible costs of broken families, lost loved ones and psychological damage to returning soldiers. (Read more…)