Not only does Tobey Maguire strike me personally as the best movie version of Spider-Man yet (we shall see if Tom Holland can usurp him for that distinction this summer) but he's always been a gifted actor to me who feels more genuine in his performances due to how he doesn't fit into the incredibly narrow definition of the conventional Hollywood leading man in either his physical appearance nor his skills as an actor. Want further proof of this? Just take a look at the 2009 drama Brothers, which stars Maguire, Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal in a motion picture that doesn't shy away from examining the true cost of engaging in war.
Soldiers are brave people, ones that are willing to sacrifice themselves for our freedom. It can be easy to forget that they were people though, average Joes and Janes like you and me, making their dedication to this dangerous cause all the more incredible. Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) was one such normal person, a guy with a wife, Grace (Natalie Portman) and two daughters as well as a brother, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose just been released from prison. Sam's been deployed to the Helman Providence, an area where a helicopter he's riding in is shot down, seemingly killing all onboard. The news of her husband's death sends Grace and the rest of Sam's family into a spiral of despair.
Tommy, whose always been a troubled fellow, tries to help out Grace by redecorating her kitchen and in the process helps her and Sam's two daughters cope. While they all bond back home, the viewer learns something extraordinary....Sam is alive. He's been captured by enemy forces and is being held hostage in brutal conditions. For much of Brothers second act, we get to see both Tommy reform himself by connecting with Sam's family and the horrors Sam endures in captivity. The scenes with Tommy and Sam's family are intentionally lit and shot like a home-spun Kodak commercial, an idyllic portrait for fulfilling family life.
Sam's surroundings, meanwhile, take on a harsher, grey-dominated appearance with this more jagged editing style that makes one thing above all else clear: he does not belong here. Trapped here, in a place where his humanity is forced from his being, no person should be tormented in this way. It's pretty horrifying to witness and Brothers makes that depiction of suffering work thanks to some smartly done filmmaking without these pivotal sequences that warp the protagonist's mind cross over into the territory of feeling ickily exploitative or what have you. Instead of using Sam's pain for surface-level shock value, Brothers is all about exploring the cost war has on a mind's psychological state in a riveting manner.
Even with that being the core theme of the movie, I'll freely admit I wouldn't have minded more screentime devoted to how Grace is coping with the loss of her husband to such tragic circumstances, though, under the strong direction of director Jim Sheridan, Natalie Portman does turn in some great work in depicting her characters difficulty in balancing her normal duties as a mother and a person and also coming to terms with the horrific calamity that has altered her families entire existence. As Tommy, Jake Gyllenhaal turns in superb work that makes the well-worn character archetype of the ne'er-do-well burnout feel incredibly layered. Gyllenhaal eschews depicting the character in an over-the-top manner, instead of lending this more somber atmosphere to Tommy as he keeps his head down and buries himself in booze in order to avoid the rhetoric from his father (played by Sam Shepard) and everyone else around him that constantly reminds him of his past mistakes.
Once he shapes up in order to help Grace and his nieces, Gyllenhaal makes his transformation into a more stable individual an organic about-face, one that feels like an evolution of a human being rather than some abrupt alteration that doesn't gel with what's come before with the character. However, easily the standout of the cast is Tobey Maguire in the lead role and man, does this guy handle the gradually diminishing mental state of the character so well. In the brief time the audience gets to spend with Sam before he heads off to war, Maguire immediately makes it clear the kind of endearing and well-rounded fella Sam is, which makes it all the more haunting when we get to see what becomes of him once he actually returns home after being captured for so long.
Maguire's choices in terms of playing this character in this fractured mental state are incredibly powerful, as the way he walks around his home and looks at the radically different surroundings (don't forget, Tommy renovated the kitchen) mimic a sleepwalker in the best way possible. He's barely conscious in the here and now and struggles to be himself when interacting with his daughters not to mention that he's suspicious of Tommy and Grace having an affair while he was being held hostage. Watching Sam try to adjust to homelife with his mind in such a traumatized state is heartbreaking to watch thanks to the incredibly powerful way Tobey Maguire plays this role and I love how the screenplay creates this ominous build-up in having Sam struggle to adapt to a life that once came so easy to him that culminates in a big birthday party confrontation. What happens there is harrowing and heartbreaking to watch, a perfect conclusion to a raw and uncompromised vision of the cost of war that is Brothers.
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