THE BRAVE ONE

Reviewed by Sam Hatch

There's something about the act of revenge that gets to us all. Especially in films. I've seen the mildest, most reasonable, law abiding people suddenly grit their teeth, hurl their popcorn aloft and shout "Yeah!" at the screen when a slimy cinematic villain gets ventilated by an ordinary citizen pushed too far. When most people think about fantasy films images of elves, sprites and dragons invariably appear in their minds, but the tried and true vigilante flick is still a fantasy film – creating a world wherein we are morally free to abandon the frustrations of red tape and painfully slow police work. A world where true catharsis is only a finger squeeze away.

Unsurprisingly, the filmic realm of the steel phallus-wielding vigilante has largely been dominated by male characters, most notably Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey from the seemingly interminable Death Wish series. Lately we've seen blatant ripoffs of that template (James Wan's Death Sentence), but The Brave One succeeds by transposing a meek, female radio jockey over the tough-as-nails pistol-packing Bronson blueprint. This allows for a mature meditation on what it is to be a vendetta killer, and The Brave One is as close to a touchy-feely vigilante movie as is probably possible.

Jodie Foster is great as usual as Erica Bain, the host and creator of a very NPR-ish radio show on which she reads detailed essays of her thoughts about New York City. Erica's only urban fears are pertaining to the nature of constant renewal and its impact on history, and that her favorite Big Apple literary characters would find themselves unfamiliar within their own city were they alive and breathing today. She leads a charmed life, and is engaged to the similarly untainted David (Naveen Andrews of Lost fame). They're so saccharinely perfect that their artist friend Nicole (Jane Adams) tells them that she hates their idyllic relationship and shoos them away when they start sucking face before her.

The script (by Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort) wastes no time putting them in a precarious predicament, and it's while walking their German Shepherd through the park that they encounter a trio of street toughs at the terminus of a short tunnel. These guys are wild cards, out for the sheer thrill of pummeling people and capturing it all on video. By the end of the fracas Erica has lost her husband, her dog and her innocent outlook on the world. Director Neil Jordan wants us to feel her pain, and stages the subsequent hospital scenes without any squeamishness.

The segue into the next element of Erica's life is compacted a bit, but it clearly shows her inability to cope with the grieving process. Likewise, she finds herself unable to return to work when on most days she can't even bring herself to open the front door. When Erica returns to the city, it's a wholly different experience than the one she's known, referenced in Jordan's warped, tilting camera angles meant to evoke her shaken frame of mind. She's used to walking the streets nonchalantly with microphone and headset, listening to the heart of the city while paying no heed to its countless blood vessels streaming past. But now, everyone looks like a threat, and she knows that they can smell the stench of her newfound victim status a mile away.

After realizing that the police are on a slow crawl to the finish line with regards to her attackers (she sits in a precinct lobby for hours waiting for a detective to speak with her about the case), she decides to arm herself. Once she scores a black market .9mm hand pistol (I would say it seemed too easy, but this is America we're talking about here), her world changes yet again. It's one thing to show Bronson or Eastwood trucking around with a massive pistol, but with someone like Foster in the role it becomes that much more dramatic how a gun can change your posture - and your entire demeanor. It's also interesting that some of the material resonates with her work as an underage streetwalker in Taxi Driver. At times it seems as if composer Dario Marianelli (V For Vendetta) is trying to emulate Bernard Herrmann's legendary score from that same film.

Soon enough, Erica finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is forced to pump rounds into a murderous psycho. I can see some merit in complaints that she finds herself needing to use a gun too quickly, but on the other hand I didn't find it heinously unbelievable that this kind of vicious lightning could strike twice – since it so often does to real people. Beyond this scene, however, Erica clearly chooses to inject herself into volatile situations. On a subway train populated by two iPod-hungry thugs, she opts to remain in the car while the other riders all vacate as soon as possible.

Cleaning up after Erica's nighttime exploits is the marvelous Terence Howard as Detective Mercer (and credit should also go to his partner Vitale, portrayed by Nicky Katt with a much needed comedic edge). Mercer is no stranger to being frustrated by the limitations of policemen, especially because he is one. The main thing that sticks in his craw is that a piece of human scum is left free on the streets with custody of a little girl, when in actuality the guy's a white collar criminal who had his own wife murdered once she promised to turn state's evidence against him. Howard's supposed to be our moral center, but he too has a few tricks up his sleeves as the story progresses.

True to life, Erica haunts the scenes of her own crimes and comes into contact with the detective – who happens to be a fan of her show and suddenly wishes to become an interview subject. Only there's more bristling beneath the surface, and this meaty stew of confliction and attraction really helps the film soar. Erica's still grieving, yet comes into contact with this charming man. On top of this is the fact that she's the street killer he's supposed to be hunting. Yet without her murderous side project, they may not have ever met in the first place.

The screenwriters are smart at occasionally reconnecting the audience with the traumatic incident that sparked this whole mess. Just when you start to forget about David, they reintroduce his presence with a heartbreaking postal delivery of wedding invitations – a bitter grain of salt that reopens Erica's wounds and sends her back on the streets. Neil Jordan also delights in shooting numerous scenes from above, as if the dead (and/or God) are helplessly watching this drama unfurl from the other side of the curtain.

By this time Erica's radio program has also changed – gone are the calm, meditative odes to urban life, replaced by an open-heart call-in confessional that her boss Carol (Mary Steenburgen) hates despite its high ratings. I appreciated Erica's on-air sentiments regarding the city as a living organism, mainly because it mirrors material I had plumbed myself in a short story years ago. Primarily the fact that two people can see entirely different things within the bowels of a metropolis. Some folks can live a lifetime with only a rosy outlook on city living, while others see nothing but danger and live under the yolk of fear. Erica's landlady is originally introduced as a bit of a bitch, but as we later learn she is someone who is no stranger to violence and her taciturn behavior was merely a layer of protection. It was she who had a deeper understanding of the world, whereas Erica and David were dancing with the devil and didn't even know it yet.

The Brave One is almost a tale of lycanthropy, for it posits that victims of sudden violence can sometimes be plagued by an almost curse-like force that transforms them into a similar creature – perfectly normal citizen by day, bloodthirsty street lurker by night. It's certainly a better werewolf film than Mike Nichols' Wolf, and there isn't even a patch of fur to be found (aside from on the German Shepherd). It's sometimes hard to connect with the Erica of the day, since we know she just popped caps in dudes the night before. By making us relate to her character, we're left feeling grimy and sullied by her actions.

Detective Mercer also learns that Erica's dark side might be dimmer than he suspected, for shortly after lending her details about a criminal suspect, the guy randomly winds up dead with a crowbar embedded in his cranium. Howard is simply awesome in these scenes, and he perfectly captures the torture of a soul divided. The more he learns, the more he suspects the girl he's falling for is a killer. And on Erica's end, the more she kills, the sloppier she gets (her attack on a seedy pimp also injures the girl she was trying to save) and we worry for her as in true MacBeth style she wades too far across the river of blood.

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