The Brave One
Sometimes when watching a film you can be chugging along and really enjoying it, but the closer and closer you get to the end you can feel the wheels starting to fall off and eventually the whole thing derails. This is the case for The Brave One. What starts of as being a fairly good cop procedural mixed with a revenge picture and a little bit of a character study for good measure just devolves into a ridiculous ending that makes no sense.
Erica Bain (Foster) is a NPR style radio host that shares stories of living in her hometown of New York. One night while walking with her fiancé David (Andrews) and their dog, they are attacked and severely beaten. Erica survives, but her future husband isn’t so lucky. Now the city that she loved and was completely ate ease with, has become a nightmare for her manage. In order to feel safe, Erica decides to arm herself and after a chance encounter in a convenience store she finds a way to take her life back.
Once again Jodie Foster puts in some good albeit ultimately fruitless work as vengeful radio host. By fruitless, I mean that since her performance is wrapped up in this particular film it will mostly likely go unnoticed come award time. That being said, as much as I like Foster here I wasn’t as floored by the acting as I had been lead to believe I would. Terrence Howard as a detective who befriends Foster is also quite good, but his character’s actions after a certain point in the film just make no sense, but he definitely makes the best of it. And for all you Lost fans, I wouldn’t get too attached to Naveen Andrews.
What I kind of find hilarious about The Brave One and a lot of the press it’s receiving is the pretense that somehow because Jodie Faster and Terrence Howard in this film it’s a piece of social commentary. I hate to break it to you, but it’s not. It’s a revenge picture. Now I’ll grant you that it is a well acted revenge picture, but it is what it is. Now that isn’t a criticism, since there have been some really great films dealing with the subject. But because Jodie Foster goes a little nuts, that doesn’t make it any better a piece of social commentary than, let’s say, Point Blank with Lee Marvin.
If I were to make a guess and let’s face it I am, this was a project destined to be ruined from its inception. You’ve got Joel Silver, who’s known for a lot more of a mass audience type of fare, producing with Jodie “Nell” Foster in the “let’s jerk some tears and win an award or two” lead role. Unfortunately, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Although The Brave One isn’t nearly as bad as the Silver’s previous attempt at cake eating with Nicole Kidman and The Invasion, it is highly disappointing.
Essentially what you have with The Brave One is a film that due to its actors it’s easy to overlook its flaws. Unfortunately, when you get to the ending that based on everything you’ve been told in the movie is completely unbelievable, that cache of things you were willing to overlook before comes flooding back. In the end the makers of The Brave One were trying give the audience a twist ending that leaves us satisfied, but by trying to cram two completely different audiences together everything grinds to a halt in one big train wreck.
The Grade
- Story: C
- Acting: B+
- Visuals: B
- Originality: B-
- Enjoyability: C
- Overall: B-
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