The Brave One 2007 Neil Jordan Cast: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Nicky Katt, Naveen Andrews, Mary Steenburgen, Ene Oloja

Written by: Jeremy Welsch AKA The Rub September 17, 2007

“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.  But what’s puzzling you, is the nature of my game.”

- The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil

The Skinny:
Jodie Foster turns vigilante after the murder of her fiancé.

The Review:
Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) and her fiancé David (Naveen Andrews) are like two peas in a pod.  She does a show on a New York talk radio station and he is a doctor.  They are blissfully in love and planning their wedding.  They fake-cute argue over things like invitations and what type of wedding they should have.  On a walk through Central Park one night with their dog, they are brutally attacked.  She is beaten within an inch of her life, and him six inches further.  She wakes from her coma three weeks later to find that David’s funeral has already been held and she is left with nothing to do but pick up the pieces and try to move on. 

Going in to this movie seemed like dangerous ground to tread so soon after seeing Death Sentence just two weeks ago.  Another movie about an average Joe turned vigilante killer after the death of their (blank)?  And even if there will always be a spot reserved in my movie loving heart for her because of Silence of the Lambs, Foster kind of fell off the map for me some time ago.  This movie surprised the hell out of me. 

There are three reasons it works so well.  First, the performances by Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard are incredible.  Foster finally jumped off that one trick pony she had been riding through her last few movies roles and added back some of the spunk that made us love her in the first place.  She’s pretty much been sleepwalking for the past five years, so it’s great to see she still possesses the talent and chops that made her famous.  Watch the scene where Erica does her first radio show after the attack.  She gets on air, freezes and restarts three different times.  It is painful to watch.  Not only do you hear the fear in her voice, but you feel it for her.  You just want to reach through the screen, take her out of the room and end the discomfort.  Not many actors could pull it off, and even fewer with such haunting effect.  Howard adds the perfect counterbalance to her performance.  He plays the rare good cop who still believes in the system he fights to protect, even if he has any number of reasons to have become jaded by it. 

Two, the direction from Neil Jordan is very solid.  Nothing is overplayed.  Even when Erica is in full on vigilante mode, the movie doesn’t just move from one kill scene to the next.  They aren’t elaborately staged scenes full of blood and carnage; they all serve the story and illustrate the conflict she is going through.  There is restraint in his direction that really sets the tone for everything, and gets it perfect.  Even toward the end when the movie walks dangerously close to becoming a cliché cat-and-mouse thriller, he has the sense enough to pull it back and ride the horse that got him here. 

Finally, the movie sort of throws conventional revenge movie wisdom out the window.  The basic structure is in place, but this movie takes the time to dig deep into the emotion behind Erica’s transformation.  This isn’t someone who lives through a brutally violent act then just decides out of thin air she wants to go on a killing spree.  She is not a superhero, she is a real person.  When she gets out of the hospital she becomes so paralyzed with fear and paranoia that she is a prisoner in her home.  She can’t sleep and is afraid to even leave.  When she finally forces herself to get out of the house, there is a level of fear to be expected, but we watch it consumer her.  She tries the conventional route of gaining some much needed normalcy (going to the cops, getting back to work, etc).  She goes to the same places she has been to a thousand times but sees things in a completely different light since the attack.  There is a slow burn to her transformation that feels not only justified, but necessary without being righteous. 

By definition The Brave One is a revenge movie, but dealing with the idea on such an emotional level is what sets it apart from some of the more mundane features from the same genre.  The entire movie barrels on a path toward an expected conclusion but at the end, throws you for a loop by doing the opposite of what you expect.  It doesn’t quite feel like cheating, but it does come out of nowhere. 

The Rub:
Typical revenge movie conventions be damned - this movie primarily deals with the emotional transformation Erica goes through after her attack.  Don’t let the boring and obvious title fool you, this is a fantastic movie carried by the strength of its direction and excellent performances.  Everything here is played at just the right tone and we haven’t seen Foster this good in some time.  Hopefully it will allow us to see more of the Jodie Foster we have come to know and love watching.

1/2

And there’s the rub.

“Don't let me smell fear on you. Fear is for the enemy. Fear and bullets. Lot's of bullets.” – John Goodman, “Death Sentence”

“For as long as I can remember, I've been searching for something, some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we? If this is a chance to find out even just a little part of that answer... I don't know, I think it's worth a human life. Don't you?” – Jodie Foster, “Contact”

There is not an actress that comes to my head that should be as recognized as Jodie Foster. She fucking owns every movie she is in, even if it is the shittiest damn movie ever. We can watch her show up every single actor on the screen, and make them look like the biggest fool. There were times in her latest film, “The Brave One,” where I caught her making Terrence Howard looks like a piece of dirt. But then again, “The Brave One” wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Basically there was a lot of talk and not a lot of actual vigilante stuff, which is basically what the trailer promoted. At the end of “The Brave One,” I felt like that I just saw a movie that would have been worth a watch on video, and not on DVD. You may think that it should be a film that you should see in theaters, with all-stars like Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard as the main characters, but trust me. “The Brave One” is a 6.75 dollar hooker of a movie. It isn’t pretty, it isn’t cheap, and it certainly isn’t the best, but it gets the job done and makes me happy at the end of it. Now lemme get back to that hooker…

Erica Bain is a talk show host for some radio show in New York, where she discusses topics on how New York has been changing each and every day. She is engaged to David, who is basically the love of her life. They seem like the perfect couple. One night, they are walking Erica’s dog in Central Park where the funniest thing happens – the dog goes running off. You know that’s never a good thing. While looking for the dog, they notice that someone’s found them. Actually, these people attack Erica and David. Three weeks later, Erica wakes up to find out she has been in a coma, and David has been killed and buried. The next ten minutes could be judged as some of the best ten minutes of the film, or the worst ten minutes of the film. We see Erica take the death of her husband in, and she finally realizes that New York is no longer the way that she used to look at it. For me, it was the worst ten minutes. It seemed a lot like a “Twilight Zone” episode. It got boring, and didn’t really fit in the movie. After them ten minutes, “The Brave One” gets back on track. She buys a gun illegally for protection, and goes to a convenient store in the city. She sees someone getting shot, and she takes matters into her own hands.

This situation only catches Detective Mercer’s attention. For all we know, Detective Mercer may be the only cop in New York that does his job. He knows that investigating the crime is more important than stopping a crime from happening. That being said, Detective Mercer knows that something is up at the situation, and when Erica gets caught up in another situation in the subway where she has to kill two men, he knows that these two crimes are related. Personally, I love to see when these vigilante killings. That was the best part of “The Punisher” (Thomas Jane), and that is the best part of “The Brave One.” But that’s just it. The vigilante killings WERE the best part. In “The Brave One,” there are four big vigilante scenes, and then the big finale. The finale could have been the best part of the film. It really could have. And then, they had to throw in a twist. Somehow, we actually find out that Mercer isn’t as professional as he was. That’s all I’m going to say. It’s more of a fuck up in the movie than a twist. They could have done without it and it would be much better.

And that’s not even the worst part of “The Brave One.” See, it looks like a drama, and it feels like a drama… at least for the first hour and fifteen minutes. After that, it turns out to be a comedy. Yes, I’m going for the record and I’m going to say that “The Brave One” is funnier than what “Balls of Fury” should have been. After all the jokes finish, it gets back to being a drama, only to become the last twenty minutes of “The Punisher,” where she invades the home of the people who killed her husband and stole her dog. Actually, that I have no complaints with. I gave “Death Sentence” four stars and the fifth place on my top for 2007 because it takes no prisoners. It put a fourteen year old in a coma and killed another with a machete. “The Brave One” doesn’t take any prisoners either in the final showdown. Jodie Foster’s role is just as bad-ass as Seth Gecko. She shoots some guy in the eye in the final ten minutes. I was just about to give it a three out of four, which was until...

Terrence Howard showed up.

Look, I love Terrence Howard just as much as the rest of you do. I named him the actor of the year in 2005. His performances in films never seem to do anything else but mesmerize me. I actually believed him as a pimp in “Hustle and Flow,” which was pretty damn hard because not even 50 Cent could have done that. He does a pretty damn good job here too. When he investigates Jodie Foster’s first crime had me rolling all over the gum-sticking floors at the theater. But it feels like the screenwriters and Neil Jordon just needed a way to have Terrence Howard find out that Jodie Foster really is this vigilante killer, so they wasted fifteen extra minutes and bring back characters that we didn’t need to bring back to get a sketch of her. The ending seemed so forced that it makes me think that Jordon didn’t know how to end the movie. That ruined the entire film for me. I would have much rather had no one find out about her being the one doing the killings all along than the actual ending that we had. Even that would have made me excited for a sequel, if there would ever be one.

Besides all of that, however, it was quite worth my money. Jodie Foster is Jodie Foster. There is no failure in her future and there certainly is no failure here. When she expresses her emotion, we feel it. She doesn’t fake any of this acting. Erica Bain may be just one of her best roles. The same can be said about Terrence Howard. With the exception of the last few minutes, I actually believed that he was a detective. There are times where it is a little bit too serious, but if you guys like serious mixed with comedy, you will like “The Brave One.” It’s not a bad movie, but it’s not the best. Meanwhile, very few of you have spent your $6.75 on “Death Sentence.” Get to it soon. You may not be able to next week. As for “The Brave One,” well, that could wait.

P.S. In the final showdown, Terrence Howard makes a few U-turns. For some reason, Gary Dourdan came to me. Yes, I’m watching TMZ TV.