"I don't know who said 'only the dead have seen the end of war'. I have seen the end of war. The question is: can I live again?"
Directed by Jim Sheridan
2009
Date Viewed: July 31, 2010
I thought from the previews that this would be a HORRIBLE movie, but it turned out to be not so bad... So Sam (Tobey Maguire) and Grace (Natalie Portman) are married with two little girls. Sam is a Marine Captain and his brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is your typical screw up. Sam goes on a mission to Afghanistan and gets into a helicopter and is thought to be dead. Most of the movie is about Grace and her daughters dealing with their grief and Tommy comes and sort of takes care of them. Meanwhile we find out that Sam is alive and in a POW camp and eventually comes home and then flips out.
Ok, so I thought this movie was going to go all Hollywood and have Grace and Tommy get involved in a super torrid affair to lessen their grief and if that had happened I was going to be annoyed at how stupid and lame Hollywood is. It didn't really go that far. There was one conversation where Grace was missing Sam and she kissed Tommy, but then stopped it. So I was actually kind of proud of Hollywood for not going overboard. Tobey Maguire totally creeped me out in this movie. He was icky. Plus his character came back with a little bit of PTSD so he was even creepier. This turned out to be a decent movie. I think Sam Shepard was a little over the top as the disapproving father of Tommy and Sam (disapproving of Tommy, but totally worshiped Sam) so I would give this movie a B-
