“Brothers” Ending All Wrong
Dec 9th
Ending All Wrong
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
BROTHERS is a remake of a 2004 Danish film, and you just might want to rent that earlier film than see this muddled mess.
Sure, this one stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire, Sam Shepard, and Mare Winningham, but there are holes in the story, unresolved issues, and problems that continue up until the very ending.
Now, these problems might be the result of the version released in theaters, perhaps because of studio pressure, and a preferred “director’s cut” is waiting in the can for its DVD release and that bane of all writers: the “alternate ending.”
Until then, we are stuck with this one.
The time is 2007, and Gyllenhaal and Maguire play brothers Tommy and Sam Cahill, who are polar opposites. Tommy was always the family screwup, whereas Sam was a star football player in high school, married his high-school sweetheart, and followed in their father’s footsteps to become a captain in the U.S. Marines.
In fact, as the movie opens, Sam is getting ready to be deployed to Afghanistan for his fourth tour of duty, and Tommy has just been released from prison.
Sam tells Tommy, “Stay out of trouble.” And Tommy replies, “All right. You be safe over there, all right?”
Before he leaves, Sam writes a letter to his wife, Grace, that he hopes won’t have to be delivered. But shortly after his arrival in Afghanistan, Sam’s helicopter is shot down by Taliban rebels, and Sam is presumed dead.
Back home, Grace takes the news of Sam’s death hard, and Tommy steps into the surprising role of comforting her and her two young daughters.
However, in spite of what the publicity would have you believe, it isn’t what you think.
Meanwhile, Sam wasn’t killed, but was captured by the Taliban and held prisoner, during which time he does something horrible.
So, when Sam is rescued and comes home, he is carrying a terrible guilt, and his arrival disrupts the new, surprising arrangement at home.
Now, if you do see this theatrical release of the film, ask yourself these questions: Does Grace read the entire contents of Sam’s letter for the audience?
Are we told everything that happened between Tommy and Grace? And does Sam reveal the whole story of his imprisonment?
BROTHERS doesn’t answer these questions, and the ending is all wrong.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Brothers – Movie Trailer
Dec 4th
Jim Sheridan’s film, adapted from Susanne Bier’s 2004 movie, concerns Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire), a Marine who receives orders to ship out for yet another tour of duty in Afghanistan. But before he leaves his supportive wife, Grace (Natalie Portman), and his two elementary-school-age daughters, Sam picks up his black sheep brother, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has finished a prison stretch for robbing a bank. While overseas, Sam’s aircraft gets shot down and he’s thought dead. Back home, irresponsible Tommy gets his act together in order to be an anchor for Grace and the girls, and the two grow emotionally — though not physically — close. As the family finally begins to make peace with their grief, soldiers rescue POW Sam and he returns home. Sam’s experiences overseas have caused him such emotional turmoil, he has a difficult time adjusting to civilian life, and soon his fear and paranoia manifest themselves in the form of jealousy for his brother’s relationship with his wife. Sam Shepard and Mare Winningham co-star as the brothers’ father and stepmother.
“The Road” More Style than Substance
Dec 2nd
More Style than Substance
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE ROAD is based on the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, it stars Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, and it is a depressing story about two people traveling on foot to the ocean in the United States after some cataclysmic event has destroyed the world and left hardly any hope for the future.
And if that isn’t depressing enough, along the way they see scenes of extreme destruction and desolation, they see terrible things both natural and as the result of other human beings who are still alive, and they do some terrible things themselves.
The two people are a man and his son, who is about 12 years old, the man believes that it is his job to kill anyone who touches his boy, and everything depends on their reaching the coast, where the man believes that living by the ocean will be better and easier than living inland is.
To set the mood for the audience, in a voice-over narration, the man says, “I think it’s October, but I can’t be sure. I haven’t kept a calendar in years.”
The man has a revolver with him, but it is not so much for protection as it is for some perverse sense of “survival.” He shows his son the two remaining bullets he has left and says, “Two left. One for you and one for me.”
Along the way, we see flashbacks to when the man was living with his wife and she was pregnant with their son, but even these scenes don’t represent happier times for the man, just times of less hardship and despair.
Whenever the man and the boy encounter other people, they usually have to hide from them, because the people are generally gangs of marauders who will take whatever they find that is useful to them and kill anything that isn’t useful. Not only that, but the gangs will also resort to cannibalism in order to have something to eat.
The man tells the boy that the two of them are the “good guys” and that they always will be no matter what happens to them. He says that they both carry the fire inside them, the desire to be good which makes them the good guys.
THE ROAD is more style than substance, and even the style is depressing.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
