Tobey Maguire, head shaved to a marine buzz, is Sam: stable, strong, loving family man, devoted older brother, and career soldier who heads into Afghanistan whole and is taken prisoner by Afghan rebels. Jake Gyllenhaal is his younger brother Tommy, the family fuck-up who mans up to take care of his brother's widow (Natalie Portman) and two little girls after Sam is reported dead.

A remake of Susanne Bier's Danish film of the same name, Brothers is being promoted as a romantic triangle inflamed by post-traumatic stress disorder. That's not exactly accurate. Brothers is more of a psychological character drama turned wartime psychodrama—less about romantic tensions than the damage of war on soldiers and the families left behind. Think of it as this generation's answer to Coming Home, with a bit of The Deer Hunter thrown in and a fraternal bond at the center.

That could be a recipe for old bromides and actorly scenes of emotional turmoil played for audiences primed to tear up, but thankfully this is not The Blind Side. Director Jim Sheridan and screenwriter David Benioff keep their adaptation focused on the people and avoid playing easy emotional cards.

By the time Sam returns home (looking both starved and on the verge of a psychotic break), the dynamics have shifted: Uncle Tommy is now the family rock and Sam is a gaunt phantom of his former self, so haunted by what he did to survive that he turns his guilt outward onto his wife and brother. But even more convincing is the emotional uncertainty of his family, an anxiety that seeps into one daughter even before he's deployed and only becomes worse when he returns a stranger. The healing is less convincing than the guilt, resentment, and anger that bubble under almost every family gathering. Welcome home, soldier.