Brothers, out last week, is a remake of the 2004 Danish film Brødre. Featuring superb acting by all those involved, it’s a heavy, stirring, yet typically American anti-war flick.

Sam (Tobey Maguire) is a marine in the US army. His brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) has just been released from prison. Sam is sent away on his fourth tour of duty to Afghanistan, leaving his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and two daughters (Bailee Madison and Taylor Grace Geare) at home.

Soon after, his helicopter is shot down and Sam is presumed dead, when in fact he’s been taken hostage by what we assume to be Taliban forces. With bro seemingly dead, it doesn’t take long for Tommy and Grace to get sweet on each other in the style of Pearl Harbour or Castaway (minus all the unintentional whimsy). But when Sam is rescued and returns home, Spiderman suddenly gets severely Raging Bull. 

The acting is what saves Brothers from its familiar plotline. Maguire, desperate to shed the Spiderman stigma, presumably took on the role to show off his acting chops.

While his tantrums are nothing to write home about, his real talent shines through as he portrays a recently rescued Sam as a listless, dead-eyed, and spooky vet. Even his daughters are creeped out by him, as you will be too. Speaking of which, where did they find these girls?

Madison and Grace Geare, particularly Madison as the elder daughter, are two phenomenally talented kids. They make every scene they’re in — Grace Geare by being cute as all get-out, and Madison by her mindbogglingly good meltdown at the dinner table scene. Portman and Gyllenhaal complement the film’s heavier roles nicely.

Brothers paints a bleak picture of the effect war can have on a family, and in this sense, it is a very good movie. But this is also where my beef lies.

Ever since Hollywood started producing anti-war films in the post-Vietnam age, they’ve always tackled one viewpoint alone: The detrimental effect that pointless wars have on our poor soldiers. Platoon, First Blood, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Jarhead, The Hurt Locker…these films, while condemning war, appear to do so only because Americans are being hurt. But what about the stories of the people caught in the crossfire?

When we see the locals in films about the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, they are either portrayed fleetingly as smiling, waving children running alongside American tanks, or sadistic, sneering villains who torture the heroic invaders. Rarely do we get to hear the civilians’ stories of what it is like to have their homes, families, and livelihoods razed by Western artillery.

To me, these are the real victims of war, not the soldiers who deliver it. While our hearts may go out to Sam’s daughters in Brothers as they cry in their beds over their affected daddy, I can’t help think of their Afghani equivalents who don’t have the daddy…or the mommy, or the future, or even the beds.        

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Questions? Comments? Email Chet Greason at popcornucopia@gmail.com.