The Brave One

This has been an interesting decade to watch Jodie Foster at work. She's an actress whose greatest asset is intelligence. Even when she's playing uneducated characters, her obvious smarts can't help but shine through. So lately we've been getting to see how she handles formulaic thrillers like Panic Room, Flight Plan, and now what is basically a remake of Death Wish inexplicably called The Brave One.

Foster is Erica Bain, who has a show on public radio that details how she loves New York City and it's fading history. She's about to be married to a hunky doctor, Naveen Andrews, and is picking out her wedding invitations. Even if a person walked into this movie after being on the space station and knew nothing about it, it's apparent this couple is doomed, and they might as play Chopin's Funeral March on the soundtrack. Sure enough, while walking their dog in Central Park, they are attacked by thugs. Andrews is killed and Foster is briefly in a coma.

At first Foster is afraid to even leave her apartment, overcome by fear, which is a terrible thing to happen to someone who previously walked the city for fun. Soon, though, what she refers to as a "stranger inside" emerges, and she buys a gun. We basically have here a combination of two of the more sensational New York crime stories of the past twenty-five years: it's as if the Central Park jogger turned into Bernhard Goetz.

This is one of those films that takes a subject like vigilantism and asks us to be thoughtful about the subject and analyze it while at the same time letting us wallow in the visceral pleasure of it. It's sort of like those exposes on the news during sweeps week about taboo topics like pornography--"Isn't this awful and degrading and disgusting, and let's look at this clip one more time." I'm the kind of person who wants nothing to do with guns, yet I admit they can be very sexy, and other than Mahatma Gandhi, who wouldn't feel a twinge of satisfaction watching a scuzzy mugger get blown away by an avenging angel, especially one as cute as Jodie Foster? But this film, try as it might, can't transcend it's B-picture origins. This is Death Wish, instead it's a with a woman and it feels guilty.

Despite all that, I liked this movie. It's well directed by Neil Jordan, looks great, and is suspenseful. It's only after leaving the theater that doubts flash across the mind. The acting is fine. Foster, teeny thing that she is, makes a dashing gun-toting heroine, who even gets an Eastwood-like quote "I want my dog back!" I've read that it was her idea to make the character a public radio host, and it's a perfect choice, because who projects civility more than public radio? Foster's performance is a familiar one, it's full of the little tics we've seen for years, like her squinting, pursing her lips, and having her voice break into a whisper, but she's still effective. Also effective is Terence Howard, as the detective who eventually realizes what she's up to (she breaks one of the cardinal rules of murder--don't return to the scene of the crime) and struggles with his own conscience. For comic relief Nicky Katt is a caution as Howard's partner.

To sum up, enjoy this movie as a standard, lurid crime drama, or squirm in your seat at a film that has pretensions about being about something. I can understand both responses.