BROTHERS Movie Review
Brothers will be released to theaters on December 4, 2009. The Movie stars Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Jim Sheridan. If you are planning to go see the movie, here are a few reviews from around the web to help you make up your mind.
Seattle Post Intelligencer
The promotional material for director Jim Sheridan’s new drama Brothers has been somewhat misleading. The film’s trailers suggest that the meat of the film is the love triangle between the three stars, only briefly touching on the post-traumatic stress suffered by soldiers in the Middle East that is the real guts of the story. Often, I’m in favor of trailers hiding possible spoilers, but here it seems more like a simple advertising ploy as producers know that the war in the Middle East is box office poison.
RopeofSilicon.com
Sam (Tobey Maguire) is the good brother. He followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Marines. He married Grace (Natalie Portman) and has two young daughters. Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the bad brother. He just got out of jail and enjoys a good drink (or six) at the local bar. Jim Sheridan’s Brothers, a remake of Susanne Bier’s 2004 film, uses the differences between the two siblings to establish a setting for a devastating domestic melodrama highly proficient in telling its story, but it will send you home in a heap.
Vancouver Sun
The movie is Brothers, a remake of Susanne Bier’s devastating film about two brothers, one good and one bad, and how they are changed by battle and absence and responsibility. It benefited from the fact that the actors were mostly unfamiliar, so we never knew what to expect of them, and from a script that teased the edges of our understanding.
Brothers Synopsis: Thirty-something Captain Sam Cahill and his younger brother Tommy Cahill, are polar opposites. A Marine about to embark on his fourth tour of duty, Sam is a steadfast family man married to his high school sweetheart, the aptly named Grace, with whom he has two young daughters. Tommy, his charismatic younger brother, is a drifter just out of jail who’s always gotten by on wit and charm. He slides easily into his role as family provocateur on his first night out of prison, at Sam’s farewell dinner with their parents, Elsie and Hank Cahill, a retired Marine. Shipped out to Afghanistan, Sam is presumed dead when his Black Hawk helicopter is shot down in the mountains. At home in suburbia, the Cahill family suddenly faces a shocking void, and Tommy tries to fill in for his brother by assuming newfound responsibility for himself, Grace, and the children.
Watch the trailer below.
