The Brave One

Despite the dedication of its star, Jodie Foster, THE BRAVE ONE is an unfortunate mix of messages: a morality tale and revenge thriller at once. While these two genres are undoubtedly similar, the script never quite decides which side of the argument it takes. As a result, the film is a dark, muddied and muddled affair, momentarily appeasing those seeking for thrills and disappointing those expecting a valid point to be made.

Radio commentator Erica Bain is about to get married to her boyfriend, and the couple couldn’t be happier. That is not an understatement: it appears that the sun goes out of its way to shine on these two. A level of happiness that high in the movies only means one thing: death and destruction. After being severely beaten and watching her fiancee’s murder in a shadowy tunnel, Erica finds it difficult to return to the normal world. The one way she finds to cope with her anxiety is to buy a gun illegally off the streets. Initially to be used for protection, Erica’s life takes a dramatic twist after accidentally being involved in a drug store shooting. After, she begins on her own quest of vigilante justice, despite a soft-spoken and supportive policeman (Terrence Howard) on both her tracks: her daytime life as Erica and her nightlife as a new, frightening creature.

Director Neil Jordan (of THE CRYING GAME and INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE) visually brings Erica’s paranoid, unraveling life into dizzying effect; the camera often sways from side to side, plainly illustrating Erica’s anxiety and her growing disgust with herself. And, as always, Foster’s performance as woman-on-the-verge is compelling and instantly sympathetic. To see her diminutive figure and wide blue eyes shaking with fear whenever she fires doesn’t exactly illicit whoops and cheers from the audience. Never is this combination more apparent than in the chilling drug store sequence, when Erica fires her first shot.

Yet despite the high style of the film and Foster’s compelling performance, it is crippled by a lack of initiative on the part of the script. During the more dramatic scenes, Erica’s self-disgust and the sometimes preachy dialogue delivered by Terrence Howard condemn vigilante justice as the wrong solution. Yet when Erica brandishes her weapon, the film is all for vigilante justice. It doesn’t care whether it’s right or wrong, it cares about giving Foster good punch lines before she shoots someone in the face. Alternately condemning vigilantism while praising its ability to make a good revenge thriller, the script pauses after each action sequence as if to say, “Now that was fun. But what’s wrong about this situation?” When the film wraps up in its clichéd and nonsensical manner, it not only betrays the message it was apparently striving for, it renders several aspects of the plot irrelevant.

In the end, the message of the film is more conflicted than the callers on Erica’s radio show. It works decently enough as a typical revenge thriller, but its motives become completely unclear when it tries to kick a message in. Erica is disgusted with what she’s becoming, but the audience cannot agree with her there. Whenever a shady character even glances at her, the audience is practically begging for her to take them down to Chinatown. As a thriller, it does provide some great moments. Yet it strives to be something more, and that is where it fails completely. With a film like this, the main character can either be a misguided and conflicted individual, or they can be a comic book superhero. Unfortunately, the film finally opts for the latter.

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