[Brothers]

Okay, before I even get started here, can anyone tell me if there is anywhere an actual case of someone recording a feature film on their cell phone and uploading it to the internet? Because seriously, people.

On one hand, at least at this screening they didn’t flat-out confiscate phones, but on the other they nearly took your head off if you checked the time on it in the half hour we waited for the movie to begin (not that I’m complaining about having that much time to kill — better inside than out). And for the first time ever (that I have witnessed) a theater staff member had to read off a legal document from the distributer letting us know exactly what the consequences would be if we were the first people in the history of the world to pirate a movie with a cell phone.

For the love. And it’s not like this was, I don’t know, Avatar or some blockbuster shit. It was a remake of a Danish film. What is the market for *that*?

Whatever. So, Brothers stars Tobey Maguire & Jake Gyllenhaal as (obvious from the title though not from looking at them) as brothers. Natalie Portman is Maguire’s wife, he gets shipped back to Afghanistan, and fresh-from-prison Jake grows a bit into the man of the house after they get the news (incorrect, as it turns out) of Tobey’s death.

Jim Sheridan has a way with directing children, and the kids here are as marvelous as the ones in In America. Carey Mulligan & Clifton Collins Jr are underused, and Maguire, back from the front, is scary as hell, but overall? I think I would rather have seen the original. Which may or may not have dealt better with the many issues of family, war, and the way we fail our soldiers when they return that this version skimmed over.