Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
9/18/07
One of the main functions
of the movies is to allow us the catharsis of simplistic solutions to complex
problems, which often means that the Good Guys do things that would make
them Bad Guys in the real world. Nowhere is this line clearer than
in the case of vigilante justice. Movie heroes always know exactly
who is guilty and how to make them pay, and movie villains always REALLY
have it coming. Alas, in the real world, vigilantism is often directed
at the innocent, and the motives of its' practitioners are rarely pure.
Neil Jordan's The Brave One is a fascinating character study that
doesn't bust out of the conventions of the vigilante thriller, but focuses
on what causes one woman to embrace her urge to “make things right” by
killing the bad guys. The mostly routine plot leans heavily on Jodie
Foster and Terrence Howard to elevate it with their performances, and they
come through in a big way.
NPR Radio Host Erica Bain
(Jodie Foster) is out for a walk with her fiance, Dr. David Kirmani (Naveen
Andrews), when they're attacked by three hoodlums. Both are horribly
beaten, and only Erica survives. When she awakens from a coma three
weeks later, she finds her life impossible to recapture as her case disappears
into the files of a police force too busy to give it more than a cursory
effort. Erica is a different person now: her on-air stories
of life in New York give way to diatribes about her lost sense of safety,
and to protect herself, she buys an illegal gun. Soon enough, she's
again at the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up shooting a robber
at a grocery store. Enter Detectives Mercer (Terrence Howard) and
Vitale (Nicky Katt), who quickly zero in on the fact that the killer was
an amateur. Meanwhile, Erica continues her slide from finishing confrontations
with criminals to inviting them and starts lingering behind the crime scenes
to make the acquaintance of Mercer. They have some things in common:
he lost his wife to divorce and also aches to see “justice” done to a criminal
he can't get evidence on. As the vigilante murders pile up, it becomes
clearer and clearer to the Detective that his new friend has something
to do with them and wants to be caught. But can he bring himself
to do his duty?
Everything that's good about
The Brave One starts with Foster. I don't know if I've ever
seen her happier on film than she is in the early scenes with Andrews,
and that, along with an excellently staged assault that really drives home
the violence's physical toll, only makes it more powerful when there's
not an ounce of joy in the post-coma Erica. In its' place is an ever-mounting
icy rage, and without ever uttering a word about it, she makes it easy
to see what the ritual of her nightly strolls is all about: she's
restaging the attack that ruined her life, only ensuring that “this time”
she comes out on top and takes her pound of flesh. More complex is
her desire to be stopped. Is it her growing friendship and respect
for Mercer? A simple desire to see the charade of her life continuing
as it had ended? Perhaps it's the feeling that what she's doing is
wrong, but I'd imagine it's more likely that she knows she WOULD have disapproved
of it... before.
Mercer is a fascinating character
all his own, initially safe behind high-minded ideals that haven't been
tested. Howard plays his cards so wonderfully close to his vest that
I'm not even sure when his empathy turns to suspicion, but even then it's
an empathetic suspicion. The scenes between the two actors are great,
and the final two are among the best movie moments of the year. I
really liked the ending, where the solution Mercer finally applies to his
problem is as tidy as it is challenging. Katt, as Mercer's wisecracking
partner, provides much-needed comic relief, as does a very funny scene
where a witness to one of Erica's killings can't provide anything useful
to the police sketch artist because he was looking at everything BUT her
face.
If only the entire movie
was as good as its' lead actors. I was pretty unhappy with everything
that happened at the radio station. Granted, I don't listen to a
lot of National Public Radio, but I didn't buy for a second the way the
content of Erica's show kept morphing depending upon the script's needs.
A scene where she goes Eric Bogosian and starts taking rapid-fire calls
from listeners is as bad as her best stuff with Howard is good, both because
the callers are straw men designed to “represent viewpoints” rather than
characters and because the actors playing them are so mad dog hammy they
belong on Crank Yankers. And Mary Steenbergen, blonde and
glammed up almost beyond recognition, can't find a handle on Erica's vaguely
disinterested boss.
It's not so much a problem
as an obstacle to the greatness the movie is reaching for, but the criminals
Erica assassinates are, to the man, frothy psychos in need of killin'.
The superior Death Sentence did a much
better job just two weeks ago making its' hero's victims both odious and
recognizably human. While The Brave One does sport smarter,
deeper lead characters than a movie of this sort usually does, it tends
to hedge its' bets by also delivering the goods for viewers who've only
come to watch Jodie Foster kick some thug ass.
While not a great movie,
The Brave One is a platform for some great performances and a couple
of exceptionally drawn characters. Over and over during it, my mind
drifted to Batman and the way the movie was doing a better job explaining
his brand of ritualized revenge than any film in that franchise has been
able to. Because it saves its' best material for the final half hour,
it left me feeling like I'd just seen a better movie than I actually had.
And it didn't hurt that some really bad guys got what they had coming to
them. |
