There are films that just can’t be described without rattling off dozens of clichés.   When I try to tell people that I love James Gray’s We Own The Night, for example, they inevitably ask, “What’s it about?”

What follows is a description that sounds like every movie ever made and me backpedaling to characterize the film and make it more than its contrivances.  Describing Brothers, this process will not be repeated.

If you’ve seen the trailer, the plot synopsis won’t confuse you.  Loser brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is released from prison just as winner brother Sam (Tobey Maguire) is deployed in Afghanistan to fight terrorism. He is reported killed in action.  Tommy takes over as surrogate father to Sam’s kids and potentially husband and lover to Sam’s beautiful wife (Natalie Portman).  Sam, his death erroneously reported, returns home considerably damaged to find his reformed brother is new favorite.  Sam rampages.

The Afghanistan footage, where Sam is kept captive and must commit grave atrocities that betray his values and his country, is completely out of step with the rest of the film. This could have provided an opportunity for tonal exercise, seeing how much the audience could take of two films in a completely different style.  However, the combat and captive scenes ring far too false. Director Jim Sheridan is much better at handling the tender side of the family drama, as his background with films like In America would suggest.  The film also suffers from a seemingly tacked-on “everybody’s fine” ending (the alternate ending theory seems to be a theme in this year’s Oscar-mongering crop).  An actor’s workshop of sorts, Sheridan does get some solid performances, notable is Sam Shepard, as the emotionally disconnected, tough-love patriarch.  But at its best, the movie is only able to rise above some of its many clichés.

–Pops Corn