Operating
very much within the same territory as the exploitation classic MS .45
(1981), this Neil (THE CRYING GAME) Jordan-helmed vehicle is at first
glance another in the long line of “harmed citizen strikes back” flicks,
but it’s head and shoulders better than most of its brethren thanks to
it having more on its mind than giving its audience the vicarious thrill
of seeing the human vermin who infest the streets greet a lead slug
head-on.
Jodie Foster plays Erica Bain, an NPR-type radio talk
show host who is brutally mugged one evening and survives the assault
while her fiancée perishes from his injuries (adding insult to injury,
the thugs also steal her dog). Understandably traumatized, she illegally
obtains a firearm and sets about cruising the NYC streets, subways and
parks in search of deserving prey, all in hope of one day finding the
bastards who took away her man. As her body count grows the police
follow her trail, and as they draw ever closer Bain enters into a
friendship with the head of the investigation, a detective named Mercer
(played by IRON MAN’s Terrence Howard). The detective sees her near the
site of a double homicide she’s just committed on the subway,
recognizes her from her mugging (he’d seen her in the hospital) and is
soon revealed to believe firmly in the letter of the law despite the
fact that it doesn’t always work for those wronged, a state of reality
that frustrates him immensely. As the two start up a dialogue and Bain
learns to trust him, the detective sees just how messed up the vigilante
talk show host is and starts to suspect she may be the killer he’s
after, but does she really deserve incarceration when what she clearly
needs is closure and therapy?
Therein lies the real heart of THE
BRAVE ONE: the viewer isn’t prompted by the script into the bloodthirsty
mania one would have expected from similar features that once populated
Times Square during the golden age of grindhouse fodder, and instead we
see the fear and paranoia Erica lives with when not safe within her
broadcasting booth. Her recovery just is not possible until she puts
down her fiancée’s killers, but until then she’s a fucking mess who’s
conflicted by her own murderous nocturnal activities and the
mostly-positive reception her rampage garners from the Big Apple’s
population. Unlike the implacable forty-four caliber juggernauts who
preceded her on the big screen, Bain is all-too-human and she’s
disturbed that her hands do not shake after she terminates the city’s
two-legged predators; all we want to see is her put down her pistol and
get the help that she so clearly needs, never once experiencing the
frisson of seeing her mete out terminal justice to a bunch of rat-fuck
scumbags who really deserve it. (Okay, I admit that I wanted the pair on
the subway to die most heinously, but so may you after one of them asks
Erica the charming question, “Have you ever been fucked with a knife?”).
No surprise, but Jodie Foster once more turns in a terrific
performance, and her character’s on-the-edge-of-sanity nervousness
fairly radiates from her fragile-looking frame, her haunted eyes
conveying volumes of tortured emotion with just a closeup.
Terrence
Howard’s Detective Mercer is also notable for being one of the more
believable “noble cop” types, and as he starts to figure out that Erica
is the vigilante killer, we actually want to see him catch her because he
obviously cares about her mental health and perfectly understands her
agony. Here is a cop who would do everything within his power to make
things right for Bain, but in lieu of that being possible, what’s a guy
to do?
A sobering antidote to vigilantism fantasy-fulfillment
movies of the MS .45 school, THE BRAVE ONE is highly recommended, but it
is in no way a cathartic feel-good date movie. It’s a study of a woman pushed
past the limits of what she believes is right, and immersed into a
visceral world where only the cold detachment of an urban hunter can
write the final chapter in her epic of tragedy, so keep that in mind
before renting.
Poster for the theatrical release.
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