Brothers

Director Jim Sheridan helms this remake from an earlier Danish effort, with a cast featuring Tobey Maguire (Sam), Natalie Portman (Grace) and Jake Gyllenhaal (Tommy). Sam and Tommy are brothers, with Sam being a career marine on his way to another tour of duty in Afghanistan, while Tommy is paroled from prison before Sam's deployment. Their father was also a marine officer, and is proud of Sam, and dismissive of Tommy's past actions.

Sam is shot down in Afghanistan and presumed dead, and the sobering news hits his family hard. Tommy picks up the slack, helping out with Sam's family, being a good uncle to Sam's 2 young daughters. Sam and a private from the same town as Sam survive as prisoners. Sam eventually escapes capture, but is haunted by his time spent imprisoned, and his return to his family is only a temporary relief to his soul, and storms are a-brewing in Sam's headspace.

The performances by the main trio are uniformily good with unsentimental undercurrents, with Maguire pulling a lot of the dramatic weight from his character's journey into and out of war. Gyllenhaal and Portman provide solid framework for their characters who find themselves intertwined under the worst of war situations for their family.

Viewers will no doubt see where the road heads for this complicated triangle between the 2 brothers and Sam's wife, it doesn't undermine the dramatic tension between them, nor undercuts the cost of war on a personal level for each and every solider who returns from battle.

I give it 3 stars, or a grade of B.