Brothers film review

certificate_15

BROTHERS

Hot on the heels of the sombre Dogma effort In Your Hands comes another Danish offering which shares a solemn tone and places ordinary people in extraordinary situations. A first class cast helps to make Brothers an engaging enough affair, although the final product is not quite equal to the sum of its parts.

The brothers of the title are Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) and Jannik (Nicolaj Lie Kaas) , who couldn't be more dissimilar in terms of looks and lifestyles. Michael is an army man through and through and his family's golden boy. A sergeant who is feared and admired by his troops for his rigid ways, he is also a devoted husband to Sarah (Connie Nielsen) and the father of two devoted daughters. His younger brother Jannik is a renegade, a petty criminal who has just been released from prison at the beginning of the film and whose intrusion into the stable family life Michael barely tolerates.

The destiny of all three characters is changed forever when Michael is sent to Afghanistan as part of the UN peacekeeping force. He is soon captured by rebels and in the film's most unsettling scenes is forced to undergo a series of humiliating rituals. His family is told that he is missing in action and they begin to fear the worst: Jannik moves in to comfort Sarah and soon their relationship crosses the acceptable brother and sister-in-law norm.

There's no doubt that director Susanne Bier has assembled a first rate cast to tell her story. Ulrich Thomsen, famous for his role as the son in Thomas Winterberg's Festen and for starring in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, is perfect as the stern military commander, and looks set to take over the mantle of Scandinavia's most-employed actor from Stellan Skarsgard. In her first Danish-language film, Connie Nielsen is equally persuasive as the wife caught in the middle of an extreme situation.

Nevertheless, despites its best intentions, the film does begin to unravel in the final third, and opts for melodrama and heightened realism which is somewhat at odds with what has gone before. It's a film that tries a little too hard to get its message across and which is ultimately let down by its resolution.