Back Shelf Beauties
by Willie Waffle

The Brave One 

She’s Batman, without the cool toys, awesome car, interesting story, or excitement.

Jodie Foster stars as Erica Bain – a New York City radio talk show host who specializes in portraying and celebrating the real New York as she lives her picture perfect, hipster metropolitan lifestyle.  One night, when walking home through Central Park with her fiancée (Naveen Andrews), the two love birds brutally are attacked by some street thugs.  Weeks after the violent act, she befriends a crusading, impeccable detective, Mercer (Terrence Howard), but also spends her nights looking to stand up for other victims and protect them from attacks similar to hers.

Will Erica be able to carry on her vigilante campaign?  How far is she willing to go?  Will Mercer figure it all out?

The Brave One should be called The Boring One or The Bland One.  The movie stands as one of the biggest disappointments of 2007 as we see a film with a great premise and fantastic lead actors fail due to a poor script, unimaginative directing and a lack of tense, real drama. 

Director Neil Jordan brings a tired 1970’s feel to the movie which slows the pace to that of a slug moving through the mud.  Then, he mixes odd images, like those of Foster being worked on in the emergency room and shots of her fiancée making love to her and touching the same spots the doctors and nurses need to address to save her life (ICK!).  Some of Erica’s showdowns with the bad guys have some interest and spark to them, but most of these scenes pass by too quickly and only briefly interrupt long periods of nothingness.    

I got the sense Jordan and the writing team (Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort) want The Brave One to be a moody, dark exploration of pain and revenge (the same feelings I experienced during and after the movie), but the material never lives up to the goal, especially when interrupted by wisecracking, hard boiled cops who make us laugh with their machismo-driven responses to crime and the horrific details they are viewing at each crime scene.  It’s so out of place, you laugh at how funny they are and how weird this sounds in this movie.  The dialogue fails to capture the imagination or bring us any deeper understanding of the characters past the obvious. Worst of all, the script takes two passionate, complex and talented actors and makes them uninteresting.    

Foster is fine as the troubled, crusading woman looking to fill the void left in her life after the attack, and hoping to bring back her own self confidence, while Howard does the best he can with thin material defining Mercer as the good cop questioning the system as the bad guys slip away.  Both are subject to an idiotic ending, but the duo is about the only reason to buy a ticket to The Brave One.

1 Waffle (Out of 4)

The Brave One is rated R for strong violence, language and some sexuality

Copyright 2007 - WaffleMovies.com

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