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63
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61
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60
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59
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58
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54
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53
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53
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53
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52
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51
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49
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49
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47
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47
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46
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45
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45
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43
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43
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43
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41
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39
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37
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36
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36
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36
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35
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35
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35
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34
My Best Friend's Girl
31
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28
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27
Women, The
26
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24
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19
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62
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51
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50
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47
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47
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46
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26
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Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Brothers
IFC Films
FILM:
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

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.

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.

100
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
Imaginative and immensely engrossing film.

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.

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.

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.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
The central performance in Brothers is by Connie Nielsen, who is strong, deep and true.

88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
A powerful, brutal, funny, tragic, vibrant, very human movie.

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.

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.

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.

83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Paula Nechak
It's a quiet anti-war film full of lovely, heartbreakingly assured performances and real situations and responses.

80
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
The end result was that the performances reached a remarkable level of intimacy and intensity.

80
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Filmed in the unadorned Dogme style and acted with a ferocious intensity.

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.

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.

80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
There's such a sense of overall intensity, you know you have been though something powerful.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
It's interesting and well-performed, but it's no Cain and Abel.

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.

50
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Brothers emerges as no less or more than Bier's claustrophobic compositions and unimaginative choices.

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.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
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