Brothers tells the story of two siblings, thirty-something 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 (Bailee Madison, Taylor Grace Geare). Tommy, his younger brother, is a drifter just out of jail. 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 (Mare Winningham) and Hank Cahill (Sam Shepard), 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 new found responsibility for himself, Grace, and the children. But Sam is not dead. And when he comes back to American soil he can't let go of the things that happened to him in Afghanistan. On top of that he has suspicions that his wife may have cheated on him with his brother... Oh boy, Brothers was a true disappointment to me. I remember seeing the trailer for the film, a couple of months ago and it seemed like an extremely intense and emotional story, plus my favorite actress, the very talented Natalie Portman? And an angry and deranged Tobey Maguire? I mean, what else can you ask for? This had the makings to be one the best films of the year and a serious Oscar contender. Unfortunately, it's none of that. The premise of the film is great and holds a lot of potential, I'm not denying that, but somehow it got lost in the way. The dialog is very simplistic and the interaction between characters feels very odd or in other words, the script is weak. Natalie Portman was not exactly bad, and at times I was able to see little glimpses of her talent in some of the more dramatic scenes but she has done much ,much better. Jake Gyllenhaal who's a very good actor as well did the best he could but his character was completely under-developed. Tobey Maguire, probably tired of doing all those crap Spiderman films, showed a lot of anger and rage but even in calm situations he looked like a psycho ready to go off at any moment, definitely a good job and probably the best acting he has done in years. And then there's Sam Shepard (Sam's father) who had a small role but made the most of it. I guess the biggest flaw of Brothers is the fact that the film takes too much time to actually get into Sam's return and him having to deal with all the things I mentioned above and that should be the main focus of the film. It's only in the third act that the film starts to get interesting and then, before you know it, it ends...
6/10
6/10