Tag Archives: war

Brothers – Movie Review

Brothers is a war-drama movie centered mainly about the importance of family, specifically brotherhood, when it comes to severe hardships.

Sam Cahill (Toby McGuire) is a Marine soldier set to be deployed to Afghanistan. His brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is imprisoned for an armed robbery and is released shortly before Sam’s deployment. Tommy isn’t liked by almost anyone in the family circle: his own father, Sam’s wife Grace (Natalie Portman)…

While on his mission in Afghanistan, Sam’s helicopter is hit by insurgents and it crashes. Supposed to be dead, his family back in the US begins its mourning process. And soon enough, his brother Tommy decides to take up the mantle to redeem himself in the eyes of those that matter to him.

However, Sam isn’t really dead. He’s been captured, along with another soldier, and they are both submitted to severe torture methods, be it mentally or physically, so when Sam is rescued, he has to deal with the demons of his capture, putting a strain on his marital and familial life.

The performances in this movie are top-notch. Toby McGuire really impressed me, especially since the last movie I watched in which he had a leading role was Spiderman 3. He completely gets rid of the Peter Parker persona for this and assumes his character with strength. He is absolutely frightening at times.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman are, naturally, also very good at what they do. Gyllenhaal’s shift from irresponsible to responsible is done extremely well, while Portman is so subdued as the wife that it’s sad sometimes to watch.

The movie itself is enjoyable but not ground-breaking. What works for it is that it focuses more on the family dynamics of the story, more so than the war aspect, similarly to The Fighter (you can read my review of that here).

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The Libyan Situation: Morally Baffling…



It is without understatement that I can say Colonel Gaddafi is a monster. That is as clear and true as the sun shining every morning in countries where the climate allows that.

He is a man who has been ruling his country with an iron fist for over forty years and he doesn’t look satisfied yet. He has done almost every single thing imaginable to stay in office, except eradicating the whole population of his country. Don’t worry, he is hell-bent on doing so as well. Just today, more than forty people were killed in a Libyan city, including children, while trying to stand in the way of armed forces opening fire on innocent people.

Even more so, Colonel Gaddafi set fire to the Libyan oil fields. If he can’t have them, why should anyone else, right?

Apparently no one.

After weeks of him murdering his people, it looks like NATO forces and Western countries “finally” took notice. I mean, they kept turning their blind eye on the dictatorships in the region. Why so? well, those dictatorships were providing them with oil and they were keeping their parts of a burning region at “peace”. What more could those countries ask?

But now Gaddafi was burning those oil fields. And oil prices had begun skyrocketing again. What were the NATO forces and armies of other Western countries (notably the US) supposed to do?

Oh yes, they intervene militarily. What’s the premise of this intervention? “humanitarian” reasons.

And here goes our moral dilemma… Gaddafi or NATO forces intervening in his country?

Sure Gaddafi does not have an reason to burn the oil fields. They are not his. They are his country’s riches. He also does not have any right to even order any of his armed forces to lay a hand on any of his people. But to say Gaddafi is sane is as credible as saying the Earth is the center of the universe. The man is a mad case. But that also does not even remotely justify what he’s been doing, which can be categorized as a genocide.

On the other hand, what gives foreign forces the right to barge into Libya and start bombarding the country left and right? They’re only there to secure their economical advantages with the oil, so to say they are there for “humanitarian” reasons is a big lie to anyone with common sense.

And there is it… our moral puzzle. Who is at more fault? the man single-handedly destroying his country? or the foreign armed forces trying to take the country by force?