Brothers

Three career-defining performances are given by the stars of director Jim Sheridan’s brilliant new film Brothers. In collaboration with screenwriter David Benioff, Sheridan has made an extremely powerful adaptation of Susanne Bier’s 2005 Danish original, and Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, and Jake Gyllenhaal shine brightly in it. If you call yourself a lover of film, you can’t afford to miss their performances in this riveting drama.

Brothers tells the story of two siblings, Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) and younger brother Tommy Cahill (Jake Gyllenhaal), who 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 Grace (Natalie Portman), with whom he has two young daughters. Tommy, his charismatic younger brother, is a drifter just out of prison who’s always gotten by on wit and charm. He slides easily into his role as family provocateur on his first night of freedom at Sam’s farewell dinner with their parents.

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. What ensues tells us a lot about family, love, perception (and misperception) of people, and the choices to be made in unfavorable situations.

In addition to the leading actors, the entire film is superbly cast. Mare Winningham as the mother, Sam Shepard as a retired Marine Corps father, and young actors Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare as the daughters bring to their roles the perfect blend of credibility in making up the Cahill family unit. In a smaller role, Carey Mulligan-- almost unrecognizable from her leading role in another of this year’s superb films, An Education--is unforgettable in her one scene. Throughout the film, six-time Academy Award-nominee Sheridan (twice for direction) is clearly the force behind this powerhouse ensemble; all other technical aspects of the film are superbly realized.

Whatever their final commercial successes are, the year 2009 has brought us two of the finest English-language war films of the decade in both Brothers and, from earlier this year, The Hurt Locker.

                                             Jim Baldassare