Brothers

Jim Sheridan’s film remakes Susanne Bier’s Brødre from 2004, written by Bier with Anders Thomas Jensen and adapted by David Benioff. The Danish version took the World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance. Shooting was in New Mexico. This is not mystery but audience privilege. The Afghanistan captivity scenes are cut in among the home scenes, so the viewer learns early that Sam was forced to beat Joe to death with a metal pipe, while the family only finds out in the last scene. The break comes from a child, not the adults: Isabelle, played by Bailee Madison, invents an affair between Grace and Tommy at the birthday dinner and tells her father she wishes he really had died. Tobey Maguire says he went from roughly 72 kilograms to about 62 at his lowest over four and a half weeks, and would not recommend it. Sheridan told U2 about the script and asked for a song; Winter plays over the closing credits and took a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song, with Maguire up that night for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama. A good fit if you can watch a child’s invented lie do more damage than the adults’ secret. Not for you if you expect the captivity held back as a late flashback; it is shown early.