The Brave One
Rating: 1.5/5
Directed by: Neil Jordan
Starring: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Carmen Ejogo
Theatrical release date: September 14, 2007
Upon visiting the Mount Rushmore of typecast actors, one would see William H. Macy as the tough-luck loser; Ashley Judd as the cute detective, serious about solving the case; and Morgan Freeman as the wise old Black man. And after “The Brave One,” the carving of Jodie Foster’s likeness should be complete. She plays the stone-faced, strong-willed female so often that the Women’s Studies department is offering her as an elective next semester. (It clusters with Gender Roles.)
In the film, Foster plays Erica Bain, a public radio host. She and her doctor fianc‚ are mugged by gang hooligans, leaving her fianc‚ dead. Bain obviously needs some time to recover and take stock. But that time is cut short as the need for revenge grows inside of her. She craves a gun. She buys one illegally, because contraband arms dealers hang out outside of gun shops, and she uses it to exact her revenge on all of the bad guys in New York. And it is not even that difficult; criminals seem to follow her around. When an angry husband shoots his wife in a convenience store, she’s conveniently there buying toiletries. Caps him in the head. When some thugs are getting knife-happy in the subway, she simply sits an extra stop. Lead meets chests. And she always escapes unseen under the cover of night. She’s like Spider-Man with a .45 and extreme bloodlust.
One does not even need to mention the man she offs with a crow bar to the skull because the point remains clearly accentuated: “The Brave One” is implausible and humorously melodramatic. It culminates with a twist ending more farfetched than anything that precedes it. Terrance Howard helps out as a clueless detective who cannot figure out his new friend is actually the vigilante he is searching for. Both give exceptional performances considering the so-called “material.”
In “The Brave One,” Neil Jordan directs another film about mistaken gender identity; everyone in the city is scratching their heads over who this “man” on a killing spree could be. (In his 1992 film “The Crying Game,” everyone assumes Dil is a woman and, well, she is definitely not.) Cue Foster as the strong woman turned androgynous symbol. The cinematography was often nauseating and the score sounded like it was composed by some philharmonic looking for their big break. It’s good to be on the edge of your seat for a while, but I’d like some time to use the rest of the chair.
The film’s chief problem is its flimsy screenplay. Foster actually helped edit the script after Nicole Kidman dropped the project. Too bad, because when I think vigilante justice, I think Nicole Kidman.
Ignoring the fact that the writing has no grip on reality, it’s still the epitome of tired clich‚. The phrases “you’ve become someone else” and “take the law into your own hands” are shot off more often than the ludicrously frequent bullets. Foster has had her character changed from a newspaper writer to a public radio host as a way to do voice over without doing actual voice over. The audience can hear her thoughts, but it’s not a cheap ploy, because she’s a radio host. Boy, that was easy. And how can we make her look more hip now that she’s armed? Let’s switch her jean jacket to a leather one and have her take up smoking and start quoting poetry nonsensically. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
“The Brave One” is going to have a marketing problem: the same people who find gun violence awesome and needless of sanction are typically not at the front of the women’s empowerment parade. But perhaps the two groups can coexist in the theater, because everyone’s dying to know the answer to the tagline “How many wrongs to make it right?” To save you a trip to the Cineplex, the answer is seven. And that’s more kills than Foster has ever made in a film. Maybe she’s not so typecast, after all.