1 of 2

The Brave One Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: R (strong violence, language and some sexuality) Genre: Action Theater release: September 14, 2007 by Warner Bros Directed by: Neil Jordan Runtime: 2 hours 2 minutes Cast: Jodie Foster (Erica Bain), Terrence Howard (Det. Sean Mercer), Naveen Andrews (David), Nicky Katt (Det. Vitale), Mary Steenburgen (Carol) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Neil Jordan's The Brave One is one of those movies that comes along occasionally from some interesting filmmaker, like Cronenberg's A History of Violence or the Polishes' The Astronaut Farmer, that leaves one squinting at something that appears so straightforward, you wonder whether the makers are entirely serious. It's a bit like a Calvin & Hobbes strip from 15 years ago, in which Calvin followed up a grotesque, avant-garde snow sculpture ridiculing bourgeois tastes with a very traditional smiling snowman representing, Calvin said, "popular nostalgia for the simple values of rural America 50 years ago." Even so, he claimed his traditional snowman was "very avant-garde." How's that? Hobbes wondered. Confided Calvin: "It's secretly ironic."

What The Brave One shares with the other films mentioned above is a rigid adherence to convention more conventional than all but the most mechanical instances of its genre. The violence in Jordan's film, like the violence (and sex) in Cronenberg's, may shock or startle, but the plot seems rigorously calculated never to surprise. It almost leads you to expect a twist, and then the twist is that there is no twist. It does exactly what such movies do, and then it does it some more, and then it stops. Is it an exemplar of the genre, or a self-conscious deconstruction? It all depends on whether the snowman is smiling because he's smiling, or because he knows snowmen are supposed to smile.

Jodie Foster as radio host Erica Bain

Though reminiscent of such unrepentantly trashy fare as Death Wish and Ferrera's Ms .45, The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster, doesn't seem to want to be a trashy film. The thing is, it doesn't seem to want to be something else, either.

The Brave One reminds us—twice—that New York City is "the safest big city in the world." It also subjects a previously happy, well-adjusted New Yorker named Erica Bain (Foster) to a battery of unrelated incidents of horrifying brutality and murderous menace, any one of which is potentially plausible, but which collectively defy all credibility.

It's a movie in which every slimeball Erica encounters menaces her with remorseless, repulsive sadism—there's never anyone who just has a lewd comment, say, or even just wants to steal her purse. Everyone wants to bludgeon or shoot her, mutilate and molest her, enslave her, run her over, what have you.

Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) helps Erica on the case

Erica hosts a radio show called Street Walk, a strange sort of synthesis of NPR programming. By day, she's at ease walking the city streets alone recording sound clips for her show. At night, accompanied both by her hunky fiancé David (Naveen Andrews, "Lost") and her big German shepherd Max, she's comfortable strolling through Central Park. Then comes the night her life is shattered by a group of vicious punks who take the dog, gleefully batter her and David nearly to roadkill, and leave them for dead. Three weeks later, Erica awakens in the hospital to learn that David is dead and buried.

Jordan idealizes Erica's sense of security prior to the tragedy: She seems not only unafraid, but lacking basic awareness, living in an idyllic world without a hint of risk. Afterwards, not only Erica but the city seems transformed, suddenly menacing and dangerous.

Partly this reflects Erica's changed consciousness, but the unsubtlety seems manipulative. Until that night in Central Park, when both she and David take too long to start feeling apprehensive, there's no hint of a disconnect between her comfort level and her environment. Afterwards, apart from an early scene depicting Erica's anxiety at sharing the sidewalk with an anonymous pedestrian whom she fears is following her, there's little to suggest an overreaction in the other direction.

Erica finds herself caught in the middle between a teen prostitute (Zoe Kravitz) and a pimp (Victor Colicchio)

Certainly, once Erica acquires a 9mm handgun—an illegal purchase from a street vendor cannily loitering outside a gun shop, catching exiting patrons on the rebound from the 30-day waiting period—there's never any doubt about the brutality of her world. The filmmakers do their best to vary her experiences and provide other victims—domestic violence in a convenience store that turns into a kill-or-be-killed shoot-out; a subway robbery that leads to ugly aggravated sexual assault (though not battery); a depraved solicitation from a john holding a drugged whore prisoner in the back seat of his car; and so on.

next page... |  1 of 2 | last page