91Èȱ¬

Connie Nielsen, the sexy sister in Gladiator and hard-done-by housewife of One Hour Photo, combines both those roles in Danish drama Brothers. She plays the wife of Michael, a soldier and upstanding family man who also looks out for his tearaway brother Jannik, a convicted bank robber. When Michael is captured - believed dead - in Afghanistan, Jannik and his sister-in-law draw closer, and a morality play of grief and fidelity unravels with gratifying unpredictability.

By switching between Michael's ordeal at the hands of his brutal captors and the lingering hugs between Sarah (Nielsen) and her brother-in-law back home, director Susanne Bier has spliced together two fairly uninspiring ideas to create an interesting whole. During his imprisonment, Michael is forced to make a devastating decision regarding the survival of a fellow POW. When he is eventually returned to his surprised family, he is consumed by guilt, prompting outbursts of violent jealousy. For all the horrors he endured in order to make it home, he finds himself seemingly cuckolded by his own brother and his reaction is explosive.

"THE PERFORMANCES ARE IMPRESSIVE"

Brothers shares some of the sophisticated ideas about guilt, grief and sibling love that made Lone Sherfig's Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself (also co-written by Anders Thomas Jensen) so fascinating, but it does not have the same charm. Nevertheless, the performances are impressive, especially Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Jannik and the very sympathetic Nielsen, who relishes the chance to show she's more than just a pretty face.

In Danish with English subtitles.