Brothers (2009)

2009's Brothers is a film about a family dealing with the after effects of their husband and father who died in war.  Brothers is one of those films that you hope nothing remotely similar will happen to anyone that you know.  If it has, I have no idea what you are going through and neither does anyone else.  What a powerful story.  I am not sure if I felt worse for Sam or Grace while I was watching the film.  I am giving Brothers a 3 star rating for a few reasons.



Toby Maguire plays Capt. Sam Cahill, and he has his ups and downs.  Most of the film reminds me of his acting in films such as Spiderman.  He has a generic smile on his face, and is pretty plain.  What did impress me was his drama.  One scene in particular near the end of the film, Toby really lets it all go.  It has to be one of the best scenes I have ever seen him act.  That scene alone makes me have more respect for him, but also makes me think he needs to do more films with more drama in them as well.  Jake Gyllenhaal was generic Jake, nothing that could not have been done by any other number of actors.  His performance was good, but not exemplary.  Natalie Portman and Sam Shepard were great as normal.  Even though they were only small roles, I was impressed by Clifton Collins Jr. and Ethan Suplee.  How much weight has Ethan lost, wow!

The charisma between all the characters was some of the most believable actions in the film.  Toby, Jake and Natalie all nailed and made you believe.  The war scenes were all shot well, and made you feel as if they could have been true war experiences.  The family drama is something you would expect to happen in a situation such as this.  The list goes on, the script and directing were good.

This is a tough one to do without spoiling, just know that Toby is not out of the film once he is killed in war.  Past that, if you want to find out you better go rent it and watch it.  If you enjoy tense situations and watching family drama unfold as the characters scramble to hold on to what little sanity they have left then Brothers is a good movie to watch.  Brothers bordered on a 4 star review because it does have a lot going for it.  I decided to drop it down to a 3 because the enjoyability was not completely there.  I would recommend it however, it does have some amazingly acted scenes and is a great (but horrible) story and drama to watch.  The film is unique in that a lot of stuff happens and it is very dramatic, however it is less than 2 hours long.

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