Jim Sheridan’s Hollywood do-over of Susanne Bier’s Danish original is a wartime soap opera served up as kitchen-sink realism, photographed by Frederick Elmes with a clear and cold albeit clichéd eye for Middle American mundanity. The Good Brother (Tobey Maguire) is off to war in Afghanistan, currently the Good War, a week after the Bad Brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) is out of prison. Then, in a contrivance every long-running daytime drama will have at some point resorted to, namely the Presumed Dead scenario, the good one is erroneously reported KIA, and in his absence the bad one, showing signs of getting better, moves in to provide aid and comfort to his sister-in-law (Natalie Portman) and two nieces. A reserved Maguire, saving up the vein-popping hysterics for the final reel, looks alarmingly pale and frail on his rescue from captivity and his return home, but the slobbery empathy for the maladjusted veteran sets a near impossible standard, as if to imply you mightn’t come in for empathy unless you’d been forced to beat one of your buddies to death with a lead pipe. (Just to tighten the screws, the widow and rug rat of the bludgeoned comrade will turn up one day in your living room.) The film’s most interesting material, the two young daughters’ shifted affection from their zombified father to their barrel-of-fun uncle, demonstrates that interest can be generated without heat and hoo-hah. Sam Shepard, Mare Winningham, Bailee Madison, Taylor Geare. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd