Brothers a Wrenching Family Drama

One brother, Michael (Ulrich Thomsen), is an upright family man with three children and a loving wife, Sarah (Connie Nielsen). An officer in the Danish military, Michael is scheduled to get shipped out to Afghanistan to assist in the allied coalition efforts going on in that country. His departure is a time for family togetherness, everyone in one place to wish their favorite man both a safe trip and speedy return.

The other brother, Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), is newly released from prison for assaulting a bank officer during a botched robbery. It was a mistake, a journey to the dark side this alcoholic reprobate cannot begin to forget or live down. Other than Michael, Jannik’s family looks at him in disgust, considers his life to be nothing more than an abstract failure of a deviant nature. If that were it, the younger brother could learn to live with his family’s disapproval. Instead, Michael refuses to give up on him, even on his last day in the country insisting Jannik will make something of his life and it’s enough to tear the depressed ex-con in two.

But when a helicopter carrying Jannik and his men is shot down and crashes into a lake, things change in an instant for Sarah, the kids and Michael’s brother Jannik. Their rock is gone, sent to his grave in a remote part of the world fighting for a cause none of them fully comprehend. For reasons he cannot quite understand, Jannik takes it upon himself to look after Sarah and her children. Getting a job with a local suburban construction crew, he contracts them to help finish the remodeling in the family’s kitchen. Jannik cuts down on his drinking, starts going on outing with the children and finds he’s granting Sarah a much-needed shoulder to cry on. Maybe Michael was right, there was a good person deep inside Jannik only needing a spark to bring him out. Of course, the only unfortunate and depressing thing being this spark had to come in the shadow of his brother’s untimely death.

What no one knows is that Michael is not dead and is instead being held captive by unnamed extremists looking to undermine the peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan. Given very little food and near-rancid water, Michael is being held with a fellow Danish captive named Henning (Bent Mejding). The young man is scared out of his mind; sure he’s going to die in some brutally savage fashion. Michael insists this will not be so, promising the soldier he’ll do all he can to make sure the both of them see their loved ones back in Denmark again. Yet, when Michael is faced with a gruesome and horrifying choice, will he be able to live with himself if his decision costs the life of a fellow countryman he’s sworn to protect even if it means saving his own life from execution?

Acclaimed director Susanne Bier’s (“Open Hearts”) latest opus “Brothers (Brødre)” is a haunting slice of life melodrama focusing on a family facing a crisis distinctly plausible in our current day and age. The central family here could easily be one from America, utterly plausible that a tight nit group nesting somewhere in the heartland is wrestling with issues and questions much the same as the one’s facing Sarah, Jannik and those three button-nose children in the suburbs of Denmark. It is a universal story, flashing with both insight and pain the likes of which most mainstream Hollywood pictures can only hint at. But it’s also exasperatingly thin, spending far too little time on its main characters most extreme problems resorting to cheap sensationalism and over exuberant theatrics to get across many of its more obtuse plot points.

Yet, it is hard not to be moved by this blisteringly real motion picture. Bier’s Dogma-esque feature glistens like life, shimmering through the façade of make believe to explode to the surface like a missile headed straight for the truth. Brilliantly photographed by Morten Søborg and edited by Pernille Bech Christensen and Adam Nielsen, “Brothers” is fascinating on so many levels it’s easy to dismiss the shortcuts and clichés Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen take with their screenplay. Still, a third act meltdown is ludicrously contrived, the steps one of the brothers has to take to bring the other back from the brink something straight out of a mid-afternoon television soap opera.

None of this matters a lick to the principal trio at the heart of things. The actors thunder through the picture like no tomorrow, plumbing depths of human emotions running the gamut from heartbreaking to uplifting. All three turn in vibrant and electrically alive portrayals, illuminating even the darkest aspects of the story with their confident and utterly human performances. I have to admit, it is strangely mesmerizing to see “Gladiator” star Nielsen speak in her native tongue. To the actress’ credit, after the first ten minutes I did finally manage to forget she’s an on-the-rise Hollywood movie star, but early on it’s just plain startling to see the ethereal beauty professing love for her husband in hyper-fast Danish.

In the end, there is enough about “Brothers” to embrace and love to look past the script’s weaker aspects. Directed with authority and magnificently acted, it is a war-torn family tale of strife and togetherness that stirs the blood, hitting the heart like a tequila cocktail made with 100-proof Cuervo. And even if it finally sputters a bit towards the end, getting there is such a wrenchingly stunning roller coaster of emotional upheaval it’s still a journey well worth celebrating.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)