As with the video, this is a very slick-sounding movie, with an intriguing mix of almost ethereal music and narration along with rougher action elements. 'The Brave One' includes a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround track (48kHz/16-bit), along with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps) and subtitle tracks in English, French and Spanish. As compelling cinema, 'The Brave One' is hardly brave at all. The film squanders a great premise, as well as the opportunity to explore the hot-button issues of violence, justice, and vigilantism, while failing to work on any level - not as a tragic romance, not as an action flick, and not even as a lurid little B-movie.
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With its A-list cast, fine production values, and smattering of effective setpieces, 'The Brave One' is not a "bad" movie in the traditional sense, but it's certainly not a good one. In hindsight, the filmmakers obviously shoehorned most of the plot developments into the script to serve its "ambiguous" ending, rather than letting the concluding events naturally unfold from what came before. The decision Mercer makes in the final minute runs so completely contrary to how his character has been set up that it violates the basics of cohesive storytelling. I won’t ruin the film’s surprise by discussing it’s plot twist resolution, but I will say that it really pissed me off. It's fine that the film asks us to decide if Erica is a hero or a villain, and lets us debate the sanctity of her actions, but to do it by creating rah-rah moments, with Foster shooting hoods on subways, while other characters deliver long, laborious speeches decrying the very same violence, just feels false. To his credit, Jordan doesn't linger on the gore, but he subtly stokes the audience's hunger for brutality by staging Erica's vigilante activities as crowd-pleasing moments. 'The Brave One' also wallows in the stuff it is supposedly rallying against.
With Foster never able to create a believable, three-dimensional character, all of the film's subsequent efforts to make resonant cultural statements ring hollow. Still, I could potentially buy into such mawkishness had Jordan and screenwriters Roderick & Bruce Taylor properly developed Erica's descent into madness, but her change is so rapid and so contrived that there is simply no emotional foundation for her sudden impulse to declare war on all low-lifes.
He paints the Erica-David romance in completely one-note, gooey-romantic terms, but frankly, Foster and Andrews have zero chemistry. Director Neil Jordan ('The Crying Game,' 'Interview with the Vampire') never nails the proper tone. The early scenes of 'The Brave One' didn’t gel for me. As the plot grows more and more improbable, a final, shocking "twist" brings the pair together, leaving Mercer to act as Erica's judge, jury, and possible executioner. Digging deeper into the crimes, and realizing that the killer may be a woman, Mercer quickly suspects that Erica may be the likely culprit. Whipping out her shiny new gun, she mows down the perpetrator, then takes to the streets - like Bronson, she is now an avenging angel, protecting the helpless and wasting any bad guys that get in her way.Īs the press reports on the actions of New York's apparent new savior, idealistic Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) takes notice of the reign of terror. Then, only weeks later (in the first of many coincidences), Erica witnesses a brutal murder at a convenience store and totally snaps. When she and her fiancee David (Naveen Andrews of “Lost”) are brutally attacked by a gang of thugs in Central Park, resulting in David’s death, Erica retreats into a spiral of unrelenting fear. Foster plays Erica Bain, the host of a successful New York radio talk show. Had Charles Bronson starred, it would be hard to distinguish the plot of the ‘The Brave One’ from that of any of the 'Death Wish' pictures. 'The Brave One' is as exploitative as any cynical grindhouse flick, but it lacks the courage to be honest about its motives. This is another A-list studio picture that's really just C-grade trash tarted up with big-names and snazzy production values. Too bad the final product is a tonal mess and morally suspect. Judging by the poster and trailers for 'The Brave One,' was I wrong to expect a truly subversive, kick-ass vigilante movie? Hyped as a distaff twist on 'Death Wish,' the promotional images of Jodie Foster, gun in hand as she mows down bad guys, got me jazzed up for a film that might do something interesting with a long-disreputable genre.
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