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

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

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.

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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)

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.

Although there is a certain escalation in the film—Erica starts out with pure self-defense, but moves up to self-defense after passing up an opportunity to escape, to self-defense after asking for trouble, to actively hunting down and confronting bad guys, and even going a step beyond that—it seems telling that Erica never takes on anyone who hasn't just been trying to kill her or is at least threatening her with deadly force or serious harm.

When this gun-wielding woman gets angry, get out of her way

When this gun-wielding woman gets angry, get out of her way

What about the police? The Brave One largely depicts them as professional but callous and unhelpful. "I understand how hard this can be," a desk sergeant repeats to each hurting soul who comes in the door. The big exception is Detective Sean Mercer (Terrence Howard), a sensitive officer who's good with kids and takes his job very much to heart. He listens to Erica's radio show and eventually strikes up a friendship with her even as he investigates what eventually appears to be a string of vigilante attacks throughout the city. The film tries to make their interaction the personal center of the story, but neither character is sufficiently self-aware to make their relationship very compelling.

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The Brave One may raise the question whether Erica's actions are right or wrong, whether in some case the right thing to do is to get out of harm's way or not put oneself in jeopardy, etc., but that everyone deserves what they get is pretty much a foregone conclusion. (Critic Ed Gonzalez points out in his Slant review that this contrasts with Ms .45, in which the victim's sense of empowerment is undermined by having her exact "revenge" on any male who crosses her, whether or not there was any threat.)

By confronting Erica with uniformly despicable thugs who consistently present a clear and present danger to herself and to others, The Brave One makes their murders as gratifying as possible to the viewer. Foster has suggested in interviews that the film is anti-violence, and I wouldn't be surprised if Jordan agrees.

In practice, though, The Brave One plays as a straightforward revenge flick, nothing more. If it doesn't condone Erica's vendetta outright, it's certainly sympathetic to the argument that the world would be a better place if battered women acquired powerful handguns and took to blowing bad guys away.

Talk About It

Discussion starters
  1. Are there any moral limits on self-defense? What are some? Would it be permissible to shoot a mugger or intruder or carjacker if there were no evidence that he intended to hurt you? Is there an obligation to try to warn an assailant before using force? What circumstances might alter these factors?
  2. What is the difference between self-defense and vigilantism? What does it mean to "take the law into your own hands"? If vigilantism is illegal, can it ever be morally justified? Are there circumstances in which it could be legitimate to buy an illegal handgun? If so, do such circumstances apply in Erica's case? Why or why not?
  3. Which actions of Erica's are morally justified? Which are not? How does the movie present them? Does it glorify them? Criticize them? Both at once? How?
  4. Is a person who has been severely traumatized fully responsible for his or her actions? How responsible do you think Erica is? How much do you think Mercer knows or guesses about Erica, and when does he know or guess it? How much responsibility, if any, does he have for her actions?
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  1. What does the Christian obligation to forgive entail? Is forgiveness contingent on repentance, or must we forgive the unrepentant and wicked? What difference does the other person's repentance or unrepentance make as far as we are concerned? Can a person be repentant and forgiven and still be liable to punishment? Does God punish people for sin in this life? What if we repent?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Brave One is rated R for strong violence, language and some sexuality. Violence includes a vicious assault and graphic images of the beaten victims, a number of bloody shootings including execution-style deaths, a vehicular assault and other confrontations. Sexuality includes brief but strong glimpses of intimacy presented in flashback, with brief explicit female nudity, as well as depraved sexual menace from a knife-wielding thug and a man holding a prostitute captive in his car. Language includes repeated use of the f-word and God's name taken in vain.

What other Christian critics are saying:

The Brave One
Our Rating
2½ Stars - Fair
Average Rating
 
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Mpaa Rating
R (strong violence, language and some sexuality)
Genre
Directed By
Neil Jordan
Run Time
2 hours 2 minutes
Cast
Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt
Theatre Release
September 14, 2007 by Warner Bros
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