I had been looking forward to Brothers based on director Jim Sheridan’s track record – he’s probably best known for My Left Foot and In America.  Brothers is a remake of a Danish film, and Hollywood creative types often blunder by making these remakes too glossy in ways that diminish the effort.  Not this time.

Sheridan doesn’t make formulaic films.  He’s better than that, which may or may not have anything to do with the fact that he’s Irish and has worked outside of the commercial Hollywood system.  At any rate, he’s better than a run of the mill craftsperson and that holds true, too, for the cast Sheridan has assembled, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, and Tobey McGuire.  As usual, Sheridan also elicits improbably good performances from the child actors, two little girls central to the narrative.

On the surface, the story is pretty straightforward:  Gyllenhaal is the “bad” brother, recently released from prison; McGuire is the “good” brother, a military officer headed to Afganistan; and, Portman is married to the Marine with whom she has two daughters.  Even if you think you know what will happen in the film based on preview trailers and commercials, you really don’t know moment to moment how events will unfold and what choices characters will make, which certainly ratchets up the drama.

Brothers examines the ravages war takes on families and is an effective film in that it tells a gripping personal story and also explores some of the larger cultural implications of war, especially how wars can dehumanize those who fight them. For the most part, ideological elements of the film are expressed in subtle ways.  This is the type of balance struck by The Hurt Locker earlier this year (one film sure to make my “Top Ten List” for 2009 in a few weeks).  This approach worked then for director Kathryn Bigelow and works again this time around for Jim Sheridan.