Jake or Tobey? Or a sandwich?

I went with low expectations, and I think that always helps. At the fag-end of its run, I watched Brothers in a near-perfect cinema with just two other people.


Starring the Boy-God Jake Gyllenhaal alongside Tobey Maguire in his first on-screen outing since Spider Man 3 ("where have you been, Tobey?"), it also stars Nathalie Portman.


The plot is bog-standard: older brother (Tobey) is the Good One, a fine athlete and makes his Dad proud, a lieutenant in the Marine Corps (his Dad was a sergeant in the Army, in Nam); the younger brother (Jake) is the Bad One, a screw-up, in trouble with the law (the film opens with his release from prison), a bar fly.


But things are seldom what they seem: Tobey leaves behind his exquisite wife and impeccably behaved daughters to "fight for his country" in Afghanistan. He is captured but believed dead. His younger brother straightens out and provides solace and comfort to the "widow" and her semi-orphans.


It sounds schmaltzy and trite. It is not: the film features some of the best "ordinary blue-collar men just being themselves together" that I've seen since Roseanne, and that is some praise indeed.


The film is not about the horrors inflicted by one imperial power after another on that impoverished country (I'm not casting stones: my own people are more guilty than most), and, if I had a criticism, it would be that the Afghan fighters rarely rise above the level of one-dimensional villains (and, once again, British actor Omid Abtahi is wheeled out to play the fanatical Muslim. Will some casting director please give him another type of role?). Something more interesting could have been done here but, on reflection, that might have unbalanced the film.


So, we have a tense, gripping drama about families that doesn't necessarily play out how you might expect. There is, alas, only one gratuitous-shot-of-Jake's-naked-torso, but it's very, very nice, and appears early on, to keep you hoping for more.


Brothers: yeah, I liked it a lot.