Jodie Foster doesn’t make bad movies. She just doesn’t. Sure, they aren’t all as brilliant as The Silence Of The Lambs or The Accused (her 2 Oscar-winning roles) but they are always interesting and quality experiences. It almost feels like just having her there makes the film take on a whole other dimension. Even her small role in Inside Man was brilliant and remarkable. She just really gives it her all.
The Brave One could have been a cliche vigilante movie. I’ve seen it before - person gets attacked, person recovers and starts taking revenge out on all the “scum of the city,” a cop befriends them and eventually figures out it’s them doing the vigilante killings, they have a bog confrontation where the cop pleads “You don’t have to do this! This is not the answer!” which is followed by either the person getting shot or giving up and going to jail. Vigilante movies are nothing new. Thankfully though, The Brave One does not sink into cliche and is in fact very original and a really well done movie.
Jodie Foster’s character, Erica Bain, goes through a horribly tragic experience and the depth she brought to the role was phenomenal. This is a multi-dimensional character, a flawed character, a person trying to navigate through a life she no longer recognizes. You can really empathize with her and connect with her experience. In the hands of another actress, it could have easily been less interesting, less compelling. But Jodie nailed it.
The vigilante aspect of the film makes an interesting point. In a society where people really don’t give a crap about eachother and criminals go unpunished all the time, is taking the law into your own hands and getting some real justice worth it? When you’re faced with criminals whom you know are guilty, dangerous and will just ride the system out, never facing any real consequences for their actions, aren’t they getting exactly what they deserve? Of course once you start condoning vigilante behavior, it will spiral out of control and turn into the wild west out there. But at the same time The Black Panther Party took up arms in the 60’s because they knew the police would not protect their community, and in fact were hostile to their community, so they vowed to defend themselves. When the law fails to protect you, what value does the law have?
Honestly we were rooting for Jodie Foster. Those dudes she killed deserved it. It’s a cold truth but people out there can be just plain crazy and dangerous. If they don’t hurt you today, they will just hurt someone else tomorrow. What really bothered us was how much attention the cops were paying to Jodie Foster’s actions. They were spending all this time trying to track her down while the homicidal thugs that beat her into a coma and beat to death her fiance were out there somewhere free in the world, no one trying to find them. No one having press conferences about murderous attacks on innocent people. No front page headlines about that. But someone takes out some murderous thugs who deserved it and that’s all the news can talk about. And that’s all the cops seem to be worrying about too. It’s not like Foster’s character was robbing banks. You mean to tell me in a big city like NYC, SHE is the main target for the cops?
Well the movie takes an interesting turn at the end (WARNING: SPOILERS). Terrence Howard does a fantastic job as Detective Mercer, the sympathetic cop who is tracking the vigilante and who also befriends Erica (Jodie Foster). Instead of going the cliche route like I described above, he figures out it’s her but in the end he takes her side. He is enough of a friend and can see the situation from a real person’s perspective, not just a cop’s, to let what needs to happen unfold. I liked that. I liked that it didn’t get preachy or turn into a bad NYPD Blue episode. Well done.
And I also really appreciated that they didn’t try and shoehorn a romance into the flick between Erica and Dt. Mercer. They become real, genuine friends and that was refreshing.
The director Neil Jordan does another excellent job with this film. He has a string of interesting projects to his name and this was no exception.
Fantastic acting and an interesting story. Definitely worth watching.
