The Brave One

Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) is a New York DJ in love with her city. The only thing she loves more is her fiancé David (Naveen Andrews). But walking through Central Park one night, the two find themselves at the mercy of thugs, who leave David dead and Erica seriously wounded. No longer feeling safe in her own city and suffering insurmountable grief, Erica is a changed woman. She soon discovers a way to cope with her loss and her fear. Fighting violence with violence

The Brave One is an uneasy film and not in the way that the filmmakers would like it to be. Coming from acclaimed Irish director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) the film is never quite sure how it wants to be perceived. Is it an arty drama examining the redemptive power of violence? Or is it a brutal but crowd-pleasing studio thriller? Needless to say, it convinces as neither.

First off, we’re presented with a hugely inaccurate picture of New York. In real-life it’s the safest big city in the world. In The Brave One it’s Gotham-lite, violent crime on every street corner. That’s how computer games are made, not good movies, and it’s quickly quite preposterous.

Take Erica’s descent into crime: mere days after waking up post-accident she turns from victim to vigilante and in an awesomely dumb scene buys a gun from a back-alley merchant. Two scenes on at the local corner shop, a man rushes in and shoots the woman on the checkout, providing Erica’s first kill. Two scenes later and Erica is threatened with rape on an empty train. More carnage. It’s quick, convenient, and carries no emotional weight at all.

More interesting than viewing The Brave One as an urban thriller is seeing it as a dysfunctional superhero movie. Erica’s arc is pure Batman. There’s even the cop, excellently played by Terrance Howard, who suspects she may be the vigilante but has conflicted feelings towards bringing her in. But sadly, The Brave One takes itself far too seriously to be fully enjoyed in such a manner.

It seems a little redundant to credit Jodie Foster’s performance as strong. Does she ever play anything else? In 99% of her output she’s a strong-willed woman who gets stronger by the end of the movie. Although The Brave One is a lot darker than her recent thrillers, it still sticks close to the stereotype. Like the film itself, her acting is so slick and expected that it merits little more than a shrug of the shoulder. Neil Jordan is clearly relishing a hefty paycheque for selling his soul to the man and has given the film a sickeningly polished feel, at odds with the supposedly gritty atmosphere that the story is trying to portray.

The Brave One appears to take no particular moral stance when it comes to judging the rights and wrongs of Erica’s actions but the title of the movie, together with a number of tidy one-liners delivered Arnie-style, suggest that a little whooping and hollering wouldn’t go amiss as Erica shoots up New York. Other than that startling first attack however, the violence barely registers. The finale is a mess, alternating from unbelievable character shifts to cloying sentimentality and leaves the film as a confusing but intriguing disappointment.

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