trailer break: ‘Brothers’

Ugh. This looks like it tells us the whole movie in two and a half minutes. I hope that’s not the case, and that it spins off into some direction we’re not expecting. Because with this cast -- Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire, and Jake Gyllenhaal, oh my! -- and director Jim Sheridan, I really, really want to like it, and expect to like it. And I may still like it even if this trailer really has spoiled the whole thing. But why do they have to do that to us? Why make it so hard to go into the movie with no preconceived expectations? I understand most moviegoers need some sense of what a movie is about in order to decide whether or not they want to see it, but there’s no reason to take it too far.

This is based on the 2005 Danish film of the same name, which is available on DVD [Region 1] [Region 2]. I haven’t seen it, and won’t before I see Sheridan’s adaptation, but I do plan to check it out before I write my review.

Brothers opens in the U.S. on December 4, and in the U.K. on January 22, 2010.