Brothers is an intense look into the lives of a disturbed family. Two brothers are very close, but one is a screwup just out of prison, and the other a hero who does everything right. Tobey’s character is the nice boy. He’s married and on his way for his second tour to Afghanistan. While he’s gone tragedy happens, and everyone is suspicious as the screw up brother steps up and tries to do the right thing for the right reasons. Or does he? After all, everyone thinks his brother is dead.

When her husband comes back, he’s changed, Or is he?

Jealous now, that something may not be exactly right about his brother’s relationship with his wife. What is wrong?

There’s a lot to these characters and no one is who you may expect. Do the brothers really care about each other? Who’s side is Dad on? What’s really going on?

This is a pretty decent movie. It’s not real fast paced, but there is an awful lot going on and the end is rather suspenseful.

Mostly I think it’s rightly named, as the realationship of the ”Brothers” is the crux of the story. But by the time it’s over, you feel like you know them all, and it’s worth the effort. This movie is often listed as anti-war. I don’t think it takes a stand on the war. But I think it’s a valid expression of how war changes people. Whether you take that as anti-war or not, I’m not able to say.

==Written by Ed Goettman ==

==From: Ed's Review Dot Com (www.edsreview.com)==

Jim Sheridan’s “Brothers” explores the psychological consequences of war on one American soldier and his family. It's based on Susanne Bier’s 2004 Danish picture of the same name, and adopts the original faithfully, aside from the fact that its principal characters are American rather than Danish. A contemporary variation on the bloody homecoming in Homer’s “Odyssey," the film focuses on the relationship between Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire), his wife, Grace (Natalie Portman), and his black sheep brother, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal). At the start of "Brothers," Sam deploys to Afghanistan for his fourth tour of duty and Tommy is released from prison. Once in Afghanistan, Sam’s chopper is shot down and he's believed dead; meanwhile, back in the states, Tommy bonds with Grace and her two daughters (Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare), developing feelings for Grace (which she returns) and becoming a paternal figure to her orphaned girls. Later on, Sam, having survived his crash and forced to commit horrible acts of violence to preserve his own life, is rescued and returned home, where he struggles with suspicions directed at Tommy and Grace, and deals with icy feelings from his own two daughters.

That plot certainly has a schematic quality, but somehow "Brothers" manages to almost completely avoid heavy melodramatic territory. Maguire, Gyllenhaal and Portman convey the tensions between their characters well, but even stronger are the two child actors Madison and Geare, who expertly evoke their characters' wrenching confusion and frustration over the return of a believed-to-be-dead father who's barely recognizable compared to the man he was before he left. And while “Brothers” is adept at expressing the profound consequences of Sam’s wartime experience, its portrayal of his time as a POW is less persuasive, largely because it too rigidly parallels the subsequent family conflict that is the film’s real focus—a conflict that most audience members will be expecting, as it's laid bare by the film’s trailers.

Much screen time is spent on a series of scenes juxtaposing Sam’s period of imprisonment and torture with the tortured attempts of his family to move on in his absence. At times these contiguous narratives feel too pat, as the audience is clearly invited to draw parallels between the Afghan war and the familial strife of the Cahills. For example, we see Sam bullying his fellow captive, Willis, battering him with orders to “give them nothing!” Immediately after, we see the Cahill family’s departure from Sam's (premature) funeral, and the friction that erupts between Sam's father, Hank (persuasively if predictably played by Sam Shepard), and Tommy, as Hank excoriates his remaining son for failing to be more like his heroic brother. A consequence of this back-and-forth narrative is that Sam's tour in Afghanistan is insufficiently developed; this prevents the film from effectively conveying the gradually worsening sense of desperation that Sam and Willis must feel as prisoners of war. And when Sam is forced to commit a foreshadowed atrocity, the act registers as far more potent in Bier's original than under Sheridan's direction—here it's unconvincing and even arbitrary. Unfortunately, this proves detrimental to the entire film as this scene essentially acts as a traumatic catalyst that the rest of the film heavily relies on.

==Written by Sean Moreland==

==From: In Review Online (www.inreviewonline.com)==

Crude, juvenile, and proud of it, Step Brothers stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as two 40-year-old men, both living at home and leading the lives of 13-year-old boys, who are thrown together when their single parents (Mary Steenburgen, Parenthood, and Richard Jenkins, Six Feet Under) get married. Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly) start out hating each other as only teenage boys can--but things get even worse for their long-suffering parents when they become best friends. Step Brothers gets most of its mileage from very lowbrow humor, but hidden among the farts and masturbation jokes is the suggestion that while these guys may be emotionally arrested, so are Brennan's hotshot business executive brother (Adam Scott, Tell Me You Love Me) and his high-fiving frat-boy pals, just in a way that's condoned because it makes money. Also crucial is that Ferrell and Reilly capture adolescence in all its gruesome glory--the awkward insecurity but also the egomaniacal, arrogant self-centeredness. Mind you, this isn't the American version of The 400 Blows or anything--one of the movie's setpieces features Brennan tea-bagging Dale's drum set (and if you don't know what tea-bagging is... well, you will after seeing this movie). All in all, Step Brothers combines the adolescent humor of producer Judd Apatow (Superbad, Knocked Up) and the comic chemistry of Ferrell and Reilly (who previously costarred in Talladega Nights)--fans of either will find plenty to enjoy. --Bret Fetzer

Stills from Step Brothers (click for larger image)