Jim Sheridan's remake of a fine Danish film substitutes melodrama for true feeling. Tobey Maguire goes a bit haywire as Sam, the good brother who joins the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, while Jake Gyllenhaal is all puppy-dog eyes as Tommy, the bad brother who stays home. When Sam disappears, Tommy cares for Sam's family, particularly his wife (Natalie Portman), and learns to be responsible. The resulting fireworks are excessive, but the film does touch some emotional truths.

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman

Rating: Three stars out of five

A 2004 Danish film that examined the nature of man and war has been transformed into an American movie -- although directed by an Irishman -- that examines the nature of melodrama.

The movie is Brothers, a remake of Susanne Bier's devastating film about two brothers, one good and one bad, and how they are changed by battle and absence and responsibility. It benefited from the fact that the actors were mostly unfamiliar, so we never knew what to expect of them, and from a script that teased the edges of our understanding.

Now, rewritten by David Benioff (The Kite Runner) and brought to the screen by Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In America), Brothers has been turned into something of a throwback in American cinema, the story of the favoured son and the dark son. It's a quality film, but it hits all its plot points so squarely on the nose that you feel like you're being led by the hand down a teary path to -- gulp -- redemption.

It starts with the cast. Tobey Maguire is Sam, a family man with a lovely and devoted wife named Grace (Natalie Portman, whose delicate beauty may be too fragile for these blue-collar precincts) and two spirited daughters (Bailee Madison and Taylor Grace Geare, two exceptional child performers who end up stealing the movie.)

Sam is a Marine, the pride of his stern, unforgiving father (Sam Shepard), who has no time for his other son, the wastrel Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal). We meet Tommy just as he's being released from prison for bank robbery; Sam, meanwhile, is off to serve in Afghanistan.

Those who have seen the tell-all trailer for Brothers -- or those who have seen East of Eden or Rich Man, Poor Man, or any of a score of good son/bad son movies -- can guess what happens next. Sam's helicopter goes down in Afghanistan and he is presumed dead. Tommy steps up, becoming a surrogate father to the girls and renovating Grace's kitchen, two quintessential acts of ingratiation. Nor does it hurt that Gyllenhaal has that same unshaven, puppy-dog appeal he showed in Brokeback Mountain. The actor never shows the rebel wastefulness the role requires: He seems irresponsible mostly in the way he manages to maintain a three-day growth of beard.

Maguire, meanwhile, with his close-cropped Marine haircut and wild eyes, takes his role in the other direction. He looks deranged even before he leaves for his tour of duty, and the movie's examination of post-traumatic stress disorder is caught up in a fit of wild-eyed overacting that makes all the characters appear they're from different films. Even Shepard, who has the lean face of middle-American disillusion, has nothing to work with but the familiar bitterness of the disappointed father.

Still, there are some truthful moments in Brothers, mostly from the girls, who express both the excitement of childhood and the teary tantrums when life becomes incomprehensible. When Sam goes missing in action, the movie examines the consequences on the family with small shifts: Grace keeps calling Sam's cellphone so she can hear his voice; she irons his shirts and smells the cuffs. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, we see the story of what really happened, in scenes that have become distressingly familiar from other recent war films: bad men with beards, desolate mountains, the intense eyes of the committed warriors.

The subtle changes in the brothers -- the things that Sam has to do to stay alive, and what that means to him, and how Tommy re-enters the world -- are not so subtle in this Brothers, which feels more concerned with the staging of its big moments. Still, it's an affecting film in many ways: Portman, who is asked mostly to glide over her tragedy, finds a reality for the young widow, and young Bailee Madison is especially good in her big moment at one of the film's several tense family dinners. That's where the real drama occurs, just as in real life, and for a moment, you forget you're watching a group of actors doing performances. For a little while anyway, Brothers feels real.

For Jay Stone's weekly movie podcast, go to www.canada.com/moviereviews.

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