A frustrating cobble of war story, familial drama and domestic melodrama, Brothers has more affecting moments than it deserves, owing to a couple of exceptional performances and a weary nation's weakness when it comes to both sad soldier stories and Jake Gyllenhaal's soulful gaze. A remake of Suzanne Bier's 2004 film, Brødre, Brothers tries to work so much mitigating dramatic circumstance into its rather classical narrative -- two brothers, one good, one bad, are forced to reevaluate their roles when one is faced with an unbearable challenge; there's a girl -- that the title, central relationship is the one that never comes into focus.
Sam (Tobey Maguire) and Tommy (Gyllenhaal) certainly share pretty blue eyes, but that constitutes the sum total evidence of their genetic bond, something their drinky, cranky ex-Marine father (Sam Shepherd) reminds them of about five seconds after arriving on screen. Tommy has just returned from a stint in prison for something bad but not too bad (i.e. he's Jake Gyllenhaal) and despite the standard issue knuckle tattoos, skull cap and 11 o'clock shadow, Gyllenhaal manages to avoid cliché even in the initial, completely clichéd "tense dinner table reunion" scene, where Tommy and Sam, who is about to be re-deployed to Afghanistan, try to respectively deflect and manage their dad's demeaning verbal blows. Mare Winningham's in there somewhere, and I'm sure she vaguely chastises her undermining husband at some point, but honestly, I have no memory of it. Equally ephemeral is Natalie Portman's role as Sam's sweet, beautiful (and lest you miss that, two different strangers stop the presses to remark on her beauty over the course of the film) wife Grace, mother to his two children and not much else. She was a cheerleader, Sam was the high school quarterback, and Tommy was the professional fuck-up. Accept it and let's move on.
David Benioff's script does, anyway, sketching out broad character and plot strokes and then moving on before even beginning to fill them in: Sam, it seems, is killed in action when his Black Hawk helicopter is shot down. The family is told and a funeral is held despite, as we later learn, having a body or even a shred of evidence for his death; even if you haven't read about the film, you can smell a Pearl Harbor coming from 50 paces. The film moves rather awkwardly between scenes of rapprochement and then a reparative bond developing between Tommy and Grace and the girls (even his dad gives in a bit, after telling Tommy, in a frustratingly allusive post-funeral parking lot dust-up, that he wishes he had died instead of Sam), and scenes of Sam, who is actually being held captive by what must be the Taliban.
The scenes that take place between Tommy and Grace and her children are the most organic in the film; Gyllenhaal is certainly (and surprisingly) believable as the hapless shithook -- it is his sudden transformation into the happy homemaker that doesn't make much sense. But Jim Sheridan has a way with family (and makeshift family) scenes that tends to pick up a lot of motivational slack; in addition, he has again cast two astoundingly adept children to portray Grace's daughters Isabelle (Bailee Madison) and Maggie (Taylor Geare), who have a burgeoning sibling rivalry of their own at work.
It is Madison, in particular, who grounds otherwise strictly formulaic scenes with sweetness, heart, and finally, ferocity. Held for months (I assume, the film doesn't specify), Sam has guided his fellow prisoner through the psychological assault of captivity, but they ultimately crack, and only Sam returns, carrying the requisite unspeakable secret. Part of the burden of what Sam did over there is a free-ranging obsession with the concept of betrayal; back at home (and the family adjusts ridiculously well to his resurrection -- another convenient gloss) it manifests in Sam's certainty that Grace has betrayed him with Tommy.
Tweaked, ghostly, and sucked in by starvation at every bone, Sam is not the husband or father he was: "When's Uncle Tommy coming over?" Isabelle asks, after her dad totally harshes on her six-year-old sister's idea of dinner table banter. I was wondering the same thing: not only is he a giant drag, his return, and the film's pivot into PTSD melodrama, has preempted the one element that was actually working. There is some solace -- and real, messy emotion -- however, in the showdown not between Tommy and Grace or Tommy and Sam (blah and double blah) but Sam and Isabelle, which takes places at yet another groaning dinner table. The deficiencies in Maguire's studied stoicism and carved, contained anguish are thrown into relief by Madison's brimming and then unstoppable rage over her father's repressive, frightening new incarnation; he's out-acted by a nine-year-old and it's totally worth it.
When the boot finally drops, none of the emotional or narrative groundwork is in place for Sam's crack-up and Tommy's whatever-it-is to arrive at some satisfying resting place. The relationship -- relatively chaste but full of mutual respect and loaded admiration -- that develops between Tommy and Grace is left completely unresolved, as though familial bonds conquer all, despite damning evidence (cf. their father) to the contrary. Sheridan seems to recognize the dead end that all of his various narrative paths point to, wrapping up the film with a quick confession and a vague and anomalous bit of voice over about whether soldiers who live to tell can actually learn to live again. Look elsewhere, is the film's apparent parting thought, for the answer to that one.