CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

xx All of Us
53 Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
57 Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
64 Appaloosa
69 Ashes of Time Redux
68 August Evening
xx B.O.H.I.C.A.
62 Baghead
84 Ballast
54 Battle in Seattle
xx Beer for My Horses
75 Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
xx Billy: The Early Years
66 Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56 Bottle Shock
55 Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50 Breakfast with Scot
61 Brick Lane
43 Call and Response
62 Changeling
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
47 Choke
46 Choose Connor
84 Christmas Tale, A
41 Cthulhu
81 Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
xx Dostana
62 Duchess, The
44 Dukes, The
63 Eden
xx Eden Lake
66 Elegy
46 Elephant King, The
80 Encounters at the End of the World
26 Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64 Fall, The
69 Fear(s) of the Dark
26 Filth and Wisdom
28 Fireproof
52 First Basket, The
67 Flow: For Love of Water
37 Forever Strong
69 Frontrunners
82 Frozen River
43 Gardens of the Night
73 Girl Cut in Two, A
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
54 Good Dick
30 Guitar, The
84 Happy-Go-Lucky
44 Henry Poole is Here
31 Hounddog
27 House of the Sleeping Beauties
47 How About You
54 Humboldt County
72 I Served the King of England
70 I.O.U.S. A
40 Igor
64 In Search of a Midnight Kiss
78 I've Loved You So Long
63 JCVD
41 Johnny Got His Gun
xx Just Buried
62 Kabluey
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
27 Lake City
78 Last Mistress, The
81 Let the Right One In
xx Lower Learning
63 Man Named Pearl, A
89 Man on Wire
xx Mary
xx Matador, The
62 Mister Foe
84 Momma's Man
51 Morning Light
79 Moving Midway
33 My Name Is Bruce
59 Nights and Weekends
73 Obscene
40 Other End of the Line, The
34 Otto; or Up with Dead People
40 Passengers
xx Phoebe in Wonderland
55 Ping Pong Playa
75 Pool, The
77 Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82 Rachel Getting Married
56 Religulous
32 Repo! The Genetic Opera
xx Roadside Romeo
53 RocknRolla
56 Save Me
74 Secret, A
45 Shoot on Sight
57 Sixty Six
84 Slumdog Millionaire
52 Special
58 Splinter
79 Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67 Synecdoche, New York
82 Tell No One
64 Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
57 Towelhead
72 Transsiberian
83 Trouble the Water
43 Tru Loved
83 U2 3D
61 Universe of Keith Haring
84 Up the Yangtze
52 Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
79 Visitor, The
61 Wackness, The
59 We Are Wizards
55 What Just Happened?
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Brothers
IFC Films

Brothers reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 76 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.6 out of 10
based on 30 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 10 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for violence, language and brief nudity

Starring Connie Nielsen, Ulrich Thomsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Bent Mejding, Solbjørg Højfeldt, Sarah Juel Werner, and Rebecca Løgstrup

The lives of two very different brothers become simultaneously intertwined and thrust apart in this intense and powerful drama. (IFC Films)


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Foreign  
WRITTEN BY: Anders Thomas Jensen
Susanne Bier (story)
 
DIRECTED BY: Susanne Bier  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: September 20, 2005 
Theatrical: May 6, 2005 
RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Denmark 
LANGUAGE(S): Danish (with English subtitles) 

Original title "Brødre"; Audience Award (World Cinema - Dramatic), 2005 Sundance Film Festival

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
A triumph of psychological drama, owing as much to Ms. Bier's sensitive style as to Anders Thomas Jensen's smart screenplay, based on Bier's own story idea.
Read Full Review
100
Premiere Peter Debruge
Brothers takes a scenario as old as Genesis – two jealous siblings spar over the affections of the same woman – and renders it fresh and immediate, by virtue of the warm, almost maternal, generosity director Susanne Bier shows her characters.
Read Full Review
100
San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Imaginative and immensely engrossing film.
Read Full Review
91
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
We do live in a fraught world of interconnections, Bier makes clear, and what happens far away matters, in unexpected ways, close to home.
Read Full Review
90
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Everyone involved -- actors, crew, director Susanne Bier and screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen in their second collaboration -- are in peak form in this unflinching look at repressed feelings and emotional devastation.
Read Full Review
90
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
A drama of uncommon moral complexity, unexpected humor, convincing transformations (for good and bad) and, best of all, vibrant, unpredictable energy. In a movie landscape littered with dead souls, here's a live one.
90
Newsweek David Ansen
Gripping from start to finish.
Read Full Review
88
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The central performance in Brothers is by Connie Nielsen, who is strong, deep and true.
Read Full Review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
A powerful, brutal, funny, tragic, vibrant, very human movie.
Read Full Review
88
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The two male leads, bulwarks of the Danish film industry for more than a decade, play off each other like the veterans they are.
Read Full Review
88
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Brothers is about how people change, how they can rise to an occasion, or sink to one. It's a tale of love and allegiance, of truth and the cruelties that men can bring to bear on one another.
Read Full Review
83
Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
These three central performances, and a solid script by Anders Thomas Jensen and director Susanne Bier, ground a potentially overwrought story in genuine feeling.
Read Full Review
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
It's a quiet anti-war film full of lovely, heartbreakingly assured performances and real situations and responses.
Read Full Review
80
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
The end result was that the performances reached a remarkable level of intimacy and intensity.
Read Full Review
80
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Filmed in the unadorned Dogme style and acted with a ferocious intensity.
Read Full Review
80
Variety Gunnar Rehlin
The second collaboration between helmer Susanne Bier and scriptwriter Anders Thomas Jensen once again shows what skilled artists can do with a story that might have ended up filled with cliches.
Read Full Review
80
Dallas Observer Bill Gallo
A beautifully acted, graceful, and intelligent film that usefully dramatizes the gulf between Fortress Bush and the relativist politics of Western Europe.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Desson Thomson
There's such a sense of overall intensity, you know you have been though something powerful.
Read Full Review
75
Miami Herald Connie Ogle
At its core, Susanne Bier's wrenching portrayal of the shifting dynamics within a Danish family is really about survival, about how we cope in the face of shattering grief and what we'll do -- anything, really -- to save ourselves.
Read Full Review
75
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Piercingly co-written and directed by Susanne Bier, the movie dramatizes one man's collapse and the other's surprising maturation.
Read Full Review
75
New York Post V.A. Musetto
Director Susanne Bier is helped by a well-chosen cast, especially the glowing Nielsen, a Danish-born actress best known for American films like "Gladiator."
Read Full Review
75
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Tapping into the basest fears of war while subverting all expectations, director Susanne Bier deftly reads between the headlines.
Read Full Review
75
Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
While the film's strength lies in an ensemble effort, it's really Sarah and Jannik who provide the film with its most compelling characters, its momentum and, ultimately, its heart.
Read Full Review
70
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Danish director Susanne Bier elicits wonderfully intimate performances from her actors, and this 2004 drama has so many genuine, low-key encounters it manages to overcome a contrived and familiar plot.
Read Full Review
70
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
A movie so nice she made it twice, Susanne Bier's Dogme-certified feature "Open Hearts" gets a slight makeover in her follow-up Brothers, another raw melodrama about three lives recalibrated by sudden tragedy.
Read Full Review
70
Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
What sets Bier's film apart from similar fare are the consistently fine performances and powerful scenes of surprising ferocity.
Read Full Review
67
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
It's interesting and well-performed, but it's no Cain and Abel.
Read Full Review
60
Empire Dan Jolin
Sounds rather soapy and melodramatic, but director Susanne Bier, assisted by an able cast, ensures the traumas are painfully realistic and subtly observed.
Read Full Review
50
Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Brothers emerges as no less or more than Bier's claustrophobic compositions and unimaginative choices.
Read Full Review
30
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Bier's portrayal of the brothers' interplay holds few surprises, and the exploitation of the war between East and West is vulgar, contrived and borderline racist.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Stephen gave it a7:
Pretty fair effort all round from Bier, well cast and acted, filmed with vigour straight from the Danish Dogme Director’s Digest, which means the fine details of Scandinavian birthday-cake protocol will be just so. The leading three are excellent - Ulrich Thomsen as the traumatised Danish soldier with the horrible Afghanistan secret that dares not speak its name, Connie Nielsen as his baffled wife, and Nikolaj Lie Kaas as his sexy but unreliable brother. The only piece of casting that I wasn’t sure of was Spain playing Afghanistan, but I guess it keeps the insurance down.

Dawn J. gave it an8:
The strengths of the movie lie in its unflinching portrayal of the very personal complexities of war. Two families are impacted-Michael's own wife and daughters and the wife and son of Niels Peter, a townsman and fellow soldier who shares his prison cave. It is in the comparison of these two families in which the film's conflict lies. We get a brief snapshot of Neils Peter's family when Michael visits her upon his return. The cropping is close; the camera closes in on a spare white kitchen table. Niels Peter's wife Ditte sit at the table, alone in her grief and longing. The film spends much more time on Sophia's family of two roustabout girls and the constantly present brother Jannik. The scope is expansive, dynamic. The range of laughter and tears is photographed in a medley of shots against a background of colors, textures, hammers, saws, and bustle. Clearly, progress is being made, particularly before Michael's return. There is no sugar coating of post-trauma life, no sentimentalized view of family. The performances are uniformly strong, the photography intense, the music good. The story leaves us with questions: Why do Jannik and Sophia not consummate their desire? Why do the brothers' parents drop out of the story once the elder son has returned? The complexities of the film provoke questions we want to see answered. Even though the film presents nothing startlingly new about PTSD, it at least offers no easy answers and is always absorbing to watch.

Bryan G. gave it an8:
Subtle differences in familiar plot lines make the reality of emotion stand out as the crowning execution in this film. It is wonderfully atypical.

Dave gave it a10:
Great film, gives a good view of the effects of war on a family.

Clint H. gave it a10:
A intense Dogme film, acted with such ferocity.

A. Post gave it a3:
Excellent idea; poorly executed.

Robin M. gave it a9:
Gripping, psychologically intense and dead-on believable, this one will keep you thinking about the Cain and Abel dimensions for days to come. Morally complex, dramatic and intelligent.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: MLB | Spore | iPhone 3G | Paris Hilton | Antivirus Software | GPS | Recipes | Shwayze | NFL

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2008 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use