"The Brave One" a cop-out
Shortly after Erica Bain kills her first perp in Neil Jordan's shamelessly pro-vigilante B-movie drama "The Brave One," she goes into the bathroom and upchucks.
This scene could be an homage to the greatest vigilante movie ever made, Michael Winner's 1974 black comedy "Death Wish," where Charles Bronson's mild-mannered architect upchucks after his first kill.
(Keep in mind that Kevin Bacon's risk-management vigilante kept his lunch in last month's "Death Sentence," so it's not an automatic requirement of the genre.)
In "The Brave One," Jodie Foster brings much more intelligence, passion and edge to Erica than the character requires. She works for a PBS-type radio station where she airs quietly thoughtful commentaries on life in New York, which she proclaims to be "the safest big city in the world."
One night while walking her dog with her fiance ("Lost" star Naveen Andrews), three thugs accost them under an overpass. They beat the fiance to death and send Erica into the hospital for a long time. Worst of all, they take her dog.
Her body mends, but Erica doesn't really recover. Her once-secure world has become a scary place where she fears every stranger and every shadow in the city.
Her dissipated self-confidence gets a boost from two things: a semi-automatic pistol she buys on impulse; and homicide cop Sean Mercer (played by Chicago's Terrence Howard). He knows about Erica's case and actually listens to her show.
When Erica starts thinning the ranks of the city's human vermin -- starting with a knife-wielding miscreant on a late-night subway -- Mercer investigates a wave of vigilante killings, not suspecting his target is the very woman he's trying to help.
Howard, one of Chicago's best acting exports, confirms on Mercer a world-weariness that hasn't yet lapsed into cynicism. His cop seems real and relevant, although he appears to be the only detective in New York City, and on call at all hours when it fits the needs of the script.
Foster continues to be a galvanizing actress, even with her frosty disposition and inaccessibly cool core.
These actors, captured in Philippe Rousselot's atmospheric, color-bled images, provide "The Brave One" with a veneer of sophistication, just the thing it needs to deny its true identity as an exploitation film pandering to our baser ideals of justice.
Both Foster and director Jordan are smart, politically discriminating filmmakers, so it's odd they would make something as overtly anti-law as "The Brave One." (Even the title praises vigilantism.)
By the time Erica implausibly confronts her attackers, her angry pronouncement "I want my dog back!" should bring cheering audiences to their feet, as Bronson's executions did in "Death Wish," a dark and clever send-up of Wild Western conventions.
Here, Erica's recovery of her dog feels like an afterthought, and her campaign to eradicate New York City of its human coyotes belongs to a pre-9/11 world when muggers and rapists topped the Big Apple's worry list.
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"The Brave One"
2 1/2 stars
out of four
Opens today
Starring As
Jodie Foster Erica Bain
Terrence Howard Sean Mercer
Naveen Andrews David Kirmani
Written by Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort. Produced by Joel Silver and Susan Downey. Directed by Neil Jordan. A Warner Bros. release. Rated R (violence, language, sexual situations). Running time: 122 minutes.