Aloof 'Brothers'

Jim Sheridan's "Brothers" opens with a shot of a trouble-plagued young man walking out of prison on the day of his release.

His name's Tommy, he's played by Jake Gyllenhaal, and not since Tim Robbins in "The Shawshank Redemption" has a guy looked so out of place and vulnerable behind bars. It's a relief when "Brothers" yanks him out of there, even if the sequence only lasts a minute.

As his backstory is filled in, we learn that Tommy in his youth frequently drunk and was angry, perhaps at the love that his father (Sam Shepard) withheld and gave instead to Tommy's brother Sam (Tobey Maguire), a star athlete and now a U.S. Marine.

Tommy gets out of prison virtually the same day that Sam is deployed to the front lines. That's a pretty bold coincidence, but in time you learn to forgive the movie its narrative cheekiness.

Settling in is easy - the cast works hard, and it's a good one. Natalie Portman is Tommy's wife, Mare Winningham is his stepmother, Carey Mulligan of "An Education" has a small role. And Sheridan, as he did in "In America" gets unbelievably natural work out of the children in the cast.

Given the harrowing places the movie ultimately takes us, it's curious that "Brothers" doesn't hit harder. The movie's coolness is hard to pin down, but as hard as the actors work, several of them are slightly miscast. There's something naggingly unconvincing about the whole thing, and that might explain why it often feels exploitive rather than emotional.

I never bought into the idea of Gyllenhaal as a hardened ex-con, Cain to Maguire's Abel. Gyllenhaal's big, watery, sensitive eyes are still up there on Brokeback Mountain, and there's nothing in him to suggest the dangerous rage that landed him in prison.

As a consequence, there's no emotional weight to the transition he makes from angry lost soul to reformed human being - playing with his absent brother's children, loving and protecting his brother's wife with chaste chivalry.

Also, as a Marine, Maguire isn't exactly R. Lee Ermey. His scenes in Afghanistan are mixed, though his home front scenes are generally fine.

There's enough here to make you want to check out the original - "Brothers" is a remake of a highly regarded 2005 Danish film by Susan Bier.

Or maybe another director could give the story another try. There's no hurry. It looks like the war will still be going on.