Brothers

Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhall

Directed by Jim Sheridan

Rating: 4 stars

Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is believed to be dead in Afghanistan. His younger brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an unresponsible troublemaker. However when the news reaches Sam's family that he is presumed to be dead, Tommy steps up and tries to help his brother's family. When Sam ends up alive, he comes home but is troubled from his time being captured by the enemy. Grace (Natalie Portman) tries her hardest to get through to Sam but it almost seems impossible.

Brothers is a moving movie showing a family's struggle of losing a husband, and father, only to find out he is alive. The only thing is, he's clearly not the same man who left for Afghanistan. Sam Cahill went through a lot after being captured by the enemy with another Marine soldier. Tommy lives in his older brother's shadow, he never seems to be good enough but he becomes responsible once he hears of his brother's death. Brothers plays a lot on emotion. It's a bit slow and not a lot of conversation takes place. I think it deserves four stars though because this film does a good job at portraying the hardships of losing someone and then finding out they are alive. You see different relationships grow and fade away. For example, Tommy and Grace. Though nothing really develops between them romantically, you see how Tommy matures and becomes dependable. Then there's Sam. Sam comes home but he is traumatized and it's hard for him to be around people. Tobey Maguire's performance was really outstanding because you can just look at his character and see how hard it was to be in Afghanistan taken prisoner.

I wouldn't really recommend this to anyone to watch. It was depressing but at least it was shorter than two hours. I would recommend this to the people who like war movies (but this isn't all entirely a war movie, there are just some clips of Sam being a prisoner). If you're curious to see this movie because it has an actor you like, then by all means watch it. You won't finish this film thinking it was great though, so don't say I didn't warn you.