In Raymond and Ray, the titular brothers battle one another at one point. Ethan Hawke's character, Ray, casually remarks about their lives not working out. Ewan McGregor's character, Raymond, replies tersely, "Hey, you're making me angry." And then the two men start striking at each other in a 0-to-100 escalation.

Similar to this scene, Raymond and Ray have a lot of heart but few subtleties. The film's grim premise—that Ben Harris has passed away and wants his sons to dig his grave—is established right away by Rodrigo Garca, who also wrote and directed it. Stiff dialogue is used repeatedly and tactlessly to emphasize how serious the situation is.

Raymond and Ray, Harris' estranged half-brothers (Harris was such an asshole, according to his sons, that he named them the same thing), would unwillingly comply with their father's illogical request. Harris was not a good father to them, as they so frequently and unceremoniously claim. Meeting people who were involved in his later life, such as his nurse Kiera (Sophie Okonedo) and his lover and friend Lucia (Maribel Verd), teaches the boys that their father was a more complex man than they initially assumed. It begs the question of how much parental and child relationships can be genuine.

It's an intriguing question, and Raymond and Ray bravely fight it. The performances by McGregor and Hawke are unpolished, treading distinct paths between sorrow, hurt, and indifference. But their interactions frequently seem pointless. They are not helped much by a lackluster script; the other characters serve only to contrast Harris' point of view. The driving query has no other direction to go than "things are complicated."