Tobey Maguire is excellent in this movie as Captain Sam Cahill who is deployed to Afghanistan with his unit for the fourth time while his loser but lovable brother stays home and comforts his family. Leaving a wife and two daughters at home is just a small part of the price that Captain Cahill will pay in service to his country.

Jake Gyllenhaal does a good job as the brother who stays home and can never seem to measure up to the standards of Sam Cahill whether in the eyes of his father or in his own eyes. There is excellent stage and personal chemistry with Natalie Portman in the role of Sam's wife Grace Cahill. It is easy to feel the tension of a forbidden romance just beneath the surface.

Sam is shot down and believed lost. Brother Tommy takes on an even greater role as the family cement. He even begins to garner a little grudging respect from his father. Then Sam is rescued and returned as if from the dead. He comes back to take up where he left off but the world has moved on.

Sam brings the war home with him in the form of memories that haunt him both night and day along with a nagging guilt concerning what he had to go through and what he had to do to return to his wife. He returns a different person to a different family. His suspicions of his wife and brother are the outward show of his pain but the pain is much deeper and the conflict for all the characters much more basic than suspicion or even marital conflict.

This is an excellent movie with a good story and wonderful acting but it is not an easy movie to watch and an even more difficult movie to forget once you watch it. The conflict runs the gamut from the most intense personal guilt to the petty jealousy of two brothers competing for approval and affection first from their father and then from the same woman. 

I recommend it. It is what movies should be about- life.