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The Brave One [2007]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk

Neil Jordan's somber The Brave One is reflective movie about a victim's sense of dislocation and isolation from her own life following a harrowing trauma, which will strike a chord with a lot of people who have known violence. The Brave One is also a provocative drama about the nature of justice, a theme explored endlessly in American movies that typically find law enforcement wanting. In Jordan's film, however, the conflict between instinctive vigilantism and legal protocols is approached with more deliberateness and complexity than usual. Finally, despite its seriousness of purpose, The Brave One, to a certain extent, is drearily tethered to the old atrocity-and-revenge genre, bumping along to the familiar, Death Wish-like rhythms of an avenger seeking successive conflicts with bad guys he or she can blow away.
Somewhat at cross-purposes, The Brave One stars Jodie Foster in a shattering performance as Erica Bain, a popular essayist on a public radio station in New York. In love and engaged to David (Naveen Andrews), a doctor, Erica and her fiancé are brutally attacked one night by a gang of thugs. David is killed but Erica survives, only to find herself a stranger in her own skin, facing down her fears by shooting violent criminals.
With the city riveted by her anonymous actions, Erica becomes an object of curiosity for a police detective (an excellent Terrence Howard) disillusioned by his own struggles to protect the innocent from truly evil men. Jordan's previous films (The Crying Game, Breakfast on Pluto) resonate with The Brave One's most interesting angle, i.e., that each of us possesses a hidden element in our identities that comes out in extreme circumstances, making us wonder who we really are. It's all excellent food for thought, but the film squanders much of its significance by thrusting Erica into numerous, outlandish situations in which her only alternative is to put a bullet in a bad guy. The result is a smart film tediously structured like a disposable B movie. --Tom Keogh

Editorial
DVD Description

For Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), the streets of New York are both her home and her livelihood. She shares the sounds and the stories of her beloved city with her radio audience as the host of the show Street Walk. At night, she goes home to the love of her life, her fiancé David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews). But everything Erica knows and loves is ripped from her on one terrible night when she and David are ambushed in a random, vicious attack that leaves David dead and Erica fighting for her life. Though Erica's broken body heals, deeper wounds remain - the devastation of losing David and, even more overwhelmingly, a suffocating fear that haunts her every step. The city streets she had once loved to roam, even places that had been warm and familiar, now feel strange and threatening. When the fear finally becomes too much to bear, Erica makes a fateful decision to arm herself against it. The gun in her hand becomes a tangible way to protect herself from an intangible enemy... or so she thinks.
Editorial
Synopsis

Oscar winners Jodie Foster and Neil Jordan team up for this tense thriller about a woman who takes the law into her own hands. After her fiancé is killed and she is left for dead, Erica Bain (Foster) stalks the criminals who changed her life forever.

Fantastic Thriller
Review date: 2008-08-30 Rating: 10 out of 10

Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) is a popular radio DJ but her life changes when she and her fiance David are attacked by a gang one night, Erica is in a coma for 3 weeks but David dies.

After the attack, Erica shuts down and becomes depressed and when she realises that the police are getting nowhere with the investigation, she buys a gun for protection fearing that the attackers will find her and kill her. While in a shop that night, a man comes in and guns down the cashier and Erica shoots him in self defense. After this, Erica discovers the stranger in herself and becomes a vigilante, hunting down criminals that have either escaped justice or people who threaten Erica, including 2 people on a subway train and a perverted man.

The Brave One does have gore in some places, but not really enough for the film to have an 18 rating but regardless of the gore, this is a great thriller that will make people wonder about the stranger inside them and what you are capable of doing if your life is in danger.

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Reviews


A remake ? Perhaps a change of prospective
Review date: 2008-08-23 Rating: 6 out of 10

This film is not a remake of old Charles Bronson's "vigilante" movies, more politically correct with "a girl with the gun". Is a complex plot of vegeange, starting almost for a combination of events. But the final is an alternative approach, with a mix of love and ruthless by a police officer only apparently "smooth"

Familiar concept, but entertaining anyway
Review date: 2008-08-22 Rating: 8 out of 10

As someone old enough to remember DEATH WISH with Charles Bronson when it was released in c.1974 I couldn't help but think that this effort directed by Neil Jordan was rather too similar in concept. Way back then, Bronson's wife and daughter were assaulted leaving the wife dead and the daughter in a coma. Bronson then cruises the streets and parks of New York blasting nasty people to death.

In The Brave One, Erica Bain (Foster) is the victim herself, and her boyfriend is murdered, in Central Park one night. Once recovered she buys a gun and goes around blasting nasty people to death. As in Death Wish, the leading investigator soon figures out who the vigilante is and doesn't make any attempt to arrest her. So yes, all so familiar.

But I enjoyed it, I thought it was superbly produced and directed, and Foster as always does a great job in carrying a movie on her own. She's done it many times before and she still cuts it. It's not completely predictable, to be fair, and it does take some interesting directions, but ultimately it satisfies because it touches the nerve that is so central to the human psyche: the thirst for vengeance. In this respect, it hits the button repeatedly and you might find yourself muttering 'YES, that's the way to do it' after she fires her gun. Simple but effective, and for anyone new to this specific genre, great entertainment.

Unfortunately it does raise questions about the glorification of guns in movies, and how killing someone can make you a hero. In Britain we have a growing problem with street killings, not all by way of a gun but this film won't act as a deterrent, that's for sure.

A film that is,nt really brave enough to follow it,s own convictions
Review date: 2008-06-14 Rating: 6 out of 10

Film's about vigilantism generally go one of two ways. They are either revel in the bad guys taking a pounding -which can be great fun- or they blur the moral boundaries between the villains and the (anti) hero so the audience questions the whole premise. The Brave One curiously attempts to straddle these two disparate approaches and ends up with a mixed message that not only might confuse the audience but definitely confuses one of it's main characters.
New York radio show host Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) has a show called Walk The City where she records the city's ambient sounds and waxes eloquently on her love for the place. She is also madly in love with her doctor fiancé (Naveen Edwards) We know this because they spend every second they are together mooning over each other in that rather sickening way madly in love couples do. When they are out walking their dog in Central Park one evening they are accosted by a group of thugs, things escalate rapidly into violence and he is put in a coma and on waking three weeks later Erica finds out that he has died and furthermore she has missed the funeral.
Finding she views the city she formerly loved with suspicion, the police ineffective and living in permanent fear Erica illegally purchases a gun and in one of those coincidences that could only happen in a movie is immediately involved in an armed robbery at a convenience store and blasts her way amateurishly out of the situation. Finding she likes the empowerment that the gun gives her she goes on a vigilante killing spree.
Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard)the cop called in on her original shooting intuitively realises that the murders are committed by the same person (Though the forensic evidence helps) but he doesn't realise it's a woman -though through a series of interviews with Erica for her radio show they form a tentative relationship leading to a culminating decision that undermines everything that the audience has seen before.
Watching miscellaneous low-life's getting the bullet , literally, is hugely satisfying in that i know it's only a film type of way and the performances are good enough to carry it off for most of the narrative. Erica is conflicted , we hear that in her radio show voice over's , see it in Foster's agonised expression, and the script echoes that conflict. Is director Neil Jordan through making a technically proficient compelling movie condemning Erica's action because if he is the ease with which she carries out her spree and the films preposterous denouement say otherwise? If he is condoning her actions then why all the hand wringing torment?
What could have been a compelling intelligent exposition on how one person deals with the loss of a loved one in a mindless violent incident loses it way badly .The Brave One fails ironically because it doesn't bite the bullet and take the audience one way or the other, though I feel it wants to say vigilantism works. And the title is badly misjudged. Erica is not brave especially ...she is just extremely p***ed off. But The P***ed Off One wouldn't make a great film title.....would it?



Old story well done
Review date: 2008-06-03 Rating: 6 out of 10

You have seen this film before, Ms Foster survives a cowardly and brutal attack and then turns vigilante. The cop following the bloody trail becomes to suspect her via her radio broadcasts on New York city life. However, The two main characters are well played and the scenes and sounds of New York evocative and emotional. Jodie Foster is superb in handling a decent script. But the plot is predictable and streches credulity, especially when Jodie Foster tackles a crime boss. All in all worth a watch.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Mary Steenburgen
Jodie Foster
Terrence Howard
Naveen Andrews

Creators:
Jodie Foster (Primary Contributor)
Naveen Andrews (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
EAN: 7321902139296
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2008-02-11
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 118 minutes

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