Director: Neil Jordan
Starring: Jodie Foster, Terence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt
Certificate: 18 (violent)
I quite like Jodie Foster as a general rule, but to be honest, by the end of The Brave One I’d almost forgotten why. The premise is fine, if you like that sort of thing. Erica Bains (Foster) is an outspoken late night radio DJ tired of the social disintegration of her beloved New York. Her life is ruined when fiancé (Naveen Andrews) is brutally murdered in front of her.
In the days that follow, Bains is unwittingly caught up in a grocery store robbery and, on a whim, shoots the perpetrator dead. The relief she feels sets her vengeful side into overdrive, the gun originally purchased for protection acting as her bloody gavel. Bains begins to clean up the streets of New York, taking out anyone and everyone she feels is sullying her city, in a desperate attempt to seek retribution for her fiancés death.
In fairness, it does start reasonably well. We see glimpses of Foster's genius as she struggles with the aftermath of her fiancés murder. A terrifyingly realistic bout of agoraphobia ensues and it’s watchable enough, if a little slow. It’s after the first vigilante murder by Bains that The Brave One spirals into something much darker and the execution (and I can’t think of a more appropriate use of the term) of the subject matter is in jaw-droppingly bad taste.
The cringe-worthy one liners Bains spouts as she goes about her killing spree ensure you mark the film immediately as a cheap shoot ‘em up. The script is a major issue – clunky, immature and, in some places, plain weird. I found myself struggling to follow the storyline. Was there some kind of sub-plot I had missed? Nope, it’s just really badly written.
The problem is that Bains extreme actions are never really challenged. The Brave One yearns to be some kind of important social commentary, but instead urges blind empathy. At one point she accidentally shoots a child prostitute, who then survives and covers the whole thing up for her because Bains is apparently doing the right thing. It simply shoves things down your throat in the hope that you’ll agree.
The overwhelming presumption is that we’d all behave like this, given the opportunity. Because we’ve all felt like shooting dead those annoying teenagers on the train haven’t we? Erm actually, no. A breath of fresh air is Terence Howard as Detective Mercer, the weary cop deployed to apprehend Bains as her mounting vigilante efforts terrify the citizens of New York. Howard just about manages to salvage a somewhat sensitive performance from the cut and paste script.
The biggest disappointment is Foster herself. If late one Friday night I had switched to one of the many Channel 5’s and come across this as a bland made-for-TV thriller, I may have gained some kind of surface enjoyment from it. Chewing gum for the brain. To have an intelligent, talented actor such as Foster struggle to play out such morally ambiguous big budget drivel is frankly depressing.
The Brave One 1/5
A decidedly dodgy low rent thriller.