Teen Screen @ IFI
Teen Screen, our new monthly film club for those aged 15 – 18, will have a special screening of Brothers on Jan 27th at 3.30. 10 FREE tickets available! text your name to 085 1737232 or email teenscreen@irishfilm.ie

As Daniel Day-Lewis and Paddy Considine will doubtless concur, Jim Sheridan has a deserved reputation as an actor’s director, something reaffirmed by career-best work from the stellar cast of this emotive U.S.-shot home-front drama. Looking appreciably lean and mean, Tobey Maguire steps up a gear as the soldier who goes missing in action in Afghanistan, while his distraught spouse Natalie Portman struggles to raise their two small daughters, receiving surprising support from Maguire’s black-sheep brother Jake Gyllenhaal.

Presented with the opportunity to grow up for once in his life, he does so, and Gyllenhaal’s work here has a warmth and nuance that’s truly insightful.

It’s all based on an excellent Danish film by Susanne Bier, yet in a way the story seems to belong in America, and Sheridan has succeeded in retaining its gut-level intensity while giving the material a useful expressive polish . . . and a dab of U2 on the soundtrack.