Starring: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews
Director: Neil Jordan
Category: IIB
Described by Jodie Foster as 'the thinking man's action movie', The Brave One lives up to this description with a pensive exploration of vigilantism and its fallout: revolving around the way a victim of street violence seeks revenge against those who left her physically and mentally scarred. Neil Jordan's film - at least the first half - is a measured account of how vengeance unravels the mind as much as it placates it.
As if not knowing how to reconcile such a cerebral thesis with the sensationalism and justice-done closure the genre dictates, however, The Brave One loses its way as the body count piles up, the confusion and ambivalence failing its premise as an effective examination about the obsession with payback in modern-day America.
From the onset it's obvious The Brave One is a descendant of Taxi Driver rather than Death Wish. True, Foster's wronged radio show host Erica Bain - who is left for dead by attackers alongside her boyfriend (Naveen Andrews) after the assault in Central Park - begins to shoot people when the two-hour film barely reaches the 30-minute mark, but Jordan has made sure the scene has been properly set to examine Bain's gun-toting deeds across New York within the framework of a city which has, once again, lost its innocence and is teeming with insecurity and paranoia. As the film's title unfolds, the screen is filled with New York's urban landscape in glorious sunshine; but a lurking menace is present as the images are contorted as if through a sea of curved mirrors. Then Bain visits an exhibition of photographs of New York shopfronts; again, a melancholic symbol of communal peace in retreat, threatened by violence lurking just around the corner.
