Brothers

Brothers is a very emotional film directed by Jim Sheridan. The main characters are Tommy, Sam and Grace Cahill. Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a brother of Sam and he just got out of prison after robbing a bank. Sam (Tobey Maguire) tries to help his brother to move on with his life and to forget his past. Their father doesn’t appreciate Tommy because of his life choices. He makes it clear that Sam is better and he thinks Tommy should learn from him. Grace (Natalie Portman) is Sam’s wife. They have a beautiful relationship and two sweet little girls, Isabelle and Maggie. But she is afraid that someday something bad is going to happen because of Sam’s dangerous work. And someday it will.

Sam is a Marine Captain. He has never been injured seriously because of his work, not until something horrible happens. Sam heads for Afghanistan, where his helicopter is shot down. Everyone, including his family think he is dead. Luckily, or in this case i may say unfortunately, he was the other of the two men who stayed alive. They were kept prisoners, tortured and forced to do what the kidnappers wanted. The most horrible scene of the movie was when Sam had to kill his friend, Joe. He was threatened that either he kills Joe, or they will kill him. It made me feel terrible. But so did him. After being rescued he was withdrawn. He just couldn’t be the same man he was before because of what he had to do.

Before the accident Grace had always hated Tommy because of his rude behaviour. However, the sorrow creates feelings between them, when Sam is considered dead. But nothing more happens. Step by step the girls become attached to Tommy. When Sam gets back home, everything has changed. He believes something has happened between Grace and tommy, even though that’s not the truth. After having a professional help because of his traumatic experience he decides to go back to work. Still, his life is different than before.

The film was horrible but at the same time i liked it. By horrible i don’t mean I hated it. It was just violent and showed what kind of life some people have to live. Their life may be a constant struggle of survival in the middle of war. I experienced a lot of feelings. Mostly anger and sadness. I even cried. I was relieved that the most awful scenes weren’t shown, at least not entirely.

The casting I think was perfect. The actors did their job very well and they were just right choices for this film. Considering their looks, the brothers looked a bit same. At times I even pondered if they really are related, but afterwards checking their names I noted they aren’t.

The soundtracks of the movie were chosen well. One of them was for instance United States Navy Hymn. That song really highlighted the theme. Most of the songs were slow and kind of sad. Three of the eight soundtracks were from the albums of U2.

I don’t usually like this kind of movies very much. But in this case it didn’t hold true. So, in conclusion I can say the film was very well executed and worth to watch.