The Brave One

Overall score:

Two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster stands a very good chance at gaining another well-deserved nomination for her performance in The Brave One. But don't expect the film itself, an engrossing, thought-provoking, but deelpy flawed film, to be a heavy comepetitor.

Foster stars as Erica Baines, a likeably pretentious NYC radio DJ who does a sort of free-style poetry on the air. Her happy life, including an engagement to handsome doctor Naveen Andrews, is destroyed when they are mugged. He fiancee is killed, and Erica, now emotionally on edge, becomes a sort of female Charles Bronson, creating the odd sensation that we are watching the fist ever artsy-feminist liberal, ultra-right pro-vigilante shoot 'em up.

Enter police detective Terrence Howard, who makes friends with Baines, but begins to suspect she maybe the one doing the Ernie Goetz impersonation. Here, the film is at its most intrguing, as it raises difficult moral question, and leads up to a nail-biting finale. However, that resolution, while shocking and unexpected, is not truly statisfying. One is left unsure what the filmmakers are trying to say, or if they even know.

The best films that deal with vigilantism (aside from Batman-style comic book heroics) raise difficult questions unanswered (see Barry Levinson's Sleepers for an example). This one doesn't wrap things up quite as neatly as Joel Schumacher's A Time to Kill, which seemed to say it's legal to kill someone who has it coming--but it could be interpreted as saying it's morally acceptable. Or perhpas not. The obstuseness of the film is its greatest strength and weakness.

Director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview With the Vampire) veers a bit too much both in dramatic tone and visual style, and the number of crimes Baines comes across just in time to save the day is a ratio that any superhero would envy. Foster, as mentioned, is excellent, but the decision to voice so much of her character's inner thoughts through rambling monolgues on her radio show is a problematic choice. Howard gives another great perfomance, actually more subtle and nuanced than Foster's, but less likely to garner attention.

The Brave One is worth a look, and certainly intrigues. But it leaves the viewer more disturbed than satisfied. . . and not necessarily in a good way.

The Brave One is rated a well-dererved R for violence, nudity, and intensity.

Reviewed by Paul Gibbs, Friday, September 14, 2007

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Written by Paul Gibbs on September 19th, 2007