Based on the 2004 Danish film of the same name by Susanne Bier, “Brothers” is a home-front melodrama that is timely, but perhaps unfashionable. In this version Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal play the brothers Sam and Tommy, whose young lives have thus far been devoted to separate state institutions, the U.S. Marines and the U.S. prison system. In their small town, made melancholy with blue filters, there seem few other trajectories for these young men, and even fewer opportunities for the film’s young women, the marine wives who spend their days chasing after children and waiting for their men to come home.

At the beginning of the film, Tommy has just been released from prison as his brother Sam prepares to go on a final tour of duty in Afghanistan. Tommy is the only character critical of the war and as a result, overly fearful of his brothers’ safety overseas, opinions he expresses less with words than with sighs, grunts and fits of anger. At a celebratory meal for the dual homecoming/sendoff, Tommy in a rare moment overtly questions the logic of war by asking Sam’s children, “Who are the bad guys?” to which they respond, “the ones with the beards” and giggle. The grown-ups do not have a better answer.

Sam’s heroism, however, is never questioned in the film. The townspeople continue to believe in the necessity of war and in the necessity of sacrificing men like Sam, as opposed to ne’er-do-wells like Tommy. This is an attitude and way of life for the most part respected by the filmmaker. Jim Sheridan (“In America”) is careful to construct for audiences a portrait of a functional lower middle class community – one with support systems in place to deal with the absences and losses that the State demands of good citizens. Instead of questioning this definition of the citizen, he delves into the rhythms of these lives, the women’s endless, reflective car rides, which link them to their husbands in tanks: “I’m surprised by how quickly it begins to feel like home,” Sam says of Afghanistan. The logic of that sentiment is underlined by this kind of parallel editing.

This peaceful routine in War gets disrupted when Sam is declared dead. As Tommy maneuvers to pick up the pieces back home, another life begins, one that gives the audience all of the pleasures of a budding romance. And unlike Maguire and Portman, Portman and Gyllenhaal have real chemistry. How can it be anything other than love that is motivating Tommy to change his ways? Sheriden however, denies this romance as a causal factor. After a single kiss while reminiscing over high school days, Tommy and Grace (Portman) never come so dangerously close again.

However, when Sam comes home, not dead after all, this pairing is all he sees. “You guys look like two teenagers in love out there,” he says to Tommy, while watching Grace skate. That is exactly what they look like. And yet Sam is presented as obviously crazy, a conspiracy theorist too tightly wrapped up in his own head. Unbelievably still and almost albino-white with an unfortunate haircut that makes his head appear misshapen, Sam haunts the frame, a ticking-time bomb and tension magnet. Unable to talk to his wife about what happened in Afghanistan, he spends the rest of the film threatening his brother and scaring his children, whose jokes he no longer understands. They prefer Tommy and are not afraid to tell him so to his face.

After a final domestic explosion, Grace and Sam seem finally set on a path toward healing. And yet, Sam is still a strange, quiet man with little skill at familial intimacy and a severed physical connection to his wife. Tommy, on the other hand, remains as appealing as ever. The mystery of their stillbirth romance remains intact and is unsettling as we acquiesce to a future between Sam and Grace. How will these lives fit together when they are so constricted and so damaged? Despite an optimistic final voice-over narration, the filmmaker leads the viewer to contemplate a landscape that is much more troubled than these comforting words.