Starring: Jodi Foster, Terrance Howard, Nicky Katt, Naveen Andrews, Mary Steenburgen

Directed by: Neil Jordan

Warner Brothers

The Official Site of The Brave One

While walking their dog though Central Park a couple is attacked and beaten. The man is killed, the woman spends 3 weeks unconscious, and the bad guys take the dog. We hear about stuff like this happening all the time but what we never hear about is what happens next. Usually because nothing happens. There’s a funeral, medical bills, a new dog is bought. In perfect situations some bad guys go to bad places for a while. But what if there were other outcomes we weren’t hearing about? Outcomes where victims, consumed by fear struggle to take back their lives eventually becoming would-be heroes as they hunt down the evildoers, blow off their eyeballs and reclaim their dogs.

We never hear about it because it’s illegal and the mothers, fathers and mid-life professionals of the world have been conditioned to follow the rules, even in extreme circumstances. We may not come to complete stops at stop signs, or buy fireworks where we’re not supposed to, but we don’t kill people.

The Brave One shows us a woman that has embraced her new found fear so much that the unfortunate evil souls that cross her path end up feeling the brunt of her pain. With graphic and escalating violence, Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) becomes more and more comfortable as a killer until she eventually crosses paths with evil on purpose. And before you know it, the most dangerous person on movie screens this weekend is a 40-year-old cougar.

"Oh no! It’s a 96 pound white woman with a gun!" Crazy, but I think that emphasises one of the points the movie tries to drive home. Anyone… ANYONE has it in them to become someone else. To cross that line to that darker side and do the unexpected. It was interesting to watch an unlikely candidate like the level headed, perpetually happy Bain slip down that path, but the fact that it's believable at all is because of how dedicated and flat out good Foster is here. Sure she's played the same type three or four times in the last decade, but there's a lot more going on here than an empowered woman taking control of her life with a stone cold gaze and a southern twang.

In fact Foster’s radio-essayist fond of walking the streets of the city she loves so much (that would be New York City, whose streets look beautiful and terrifying all at once in the eye of director Neil Jordan Pardon my nerdity but comics came to mind. As most of the best superheroes are masked vigilantes, I couldn’t help but recognize The Brave One for the perfect anti-hero origin story it is. The transition is so gradual and believable that it’s hard not to accept and I could very easily see the birth of the next great bad boy (or girl) of comics within this movie. But it’s different. The best vigilantes are worn in before they even put on the spandex. Batman went nuts as soon as his mom’s pearls hit the pavement, and The Punisher hacked and slashed his way through Vietnam before the slaughter of his family drove him over the edge. They were perfect weapons before their comic careers began. But Erica Bain’s outsider decent is a fascinating progression of a truly unbalanced individual ruled by the obsession of overcoming fear. There’s a grand anti-hero in there somewhere.

During her transformation, Bain reaches out to the detective assigned to her case (another strong performance from Terrance Howard) that happens to be on an ethical journey of his own. Without revealing herself to him, the two bond over their shared frustration with the evil of the world and the restrictions of the legal system. They’re the same person, except that one of them has gotten tired of playing by the rules.

The duo work really well together and you believe their friendship, in part because their fears and frustrations are universal ones. But because they are on opposite ends of the law, a butting of the heads is inevitable.

The result is a bleak, if not stubbornly glorified ending where the audience is persuaded to cheer the worst in humanity. Somewhere along the line revenge becomes empowerment and murder becomes acceptable, and we're all blind to the fact that Bain has sunk to their level. Or perhaps we're celebrating it because she does what we can't, or what we think we would do if, God forbid, we were put in her situation. The truth is though that few of us are "brave" or "heroic" enough to take another's life, and even fewer are "brave" or "heroic" enough to remember that that's not the solution.

Rating: 7 out of 10 Sorry to drop the drama on you at the end there, but The Brave One really skews morality and gets the audience to support absolutely horrible things. I'm sure the film does so knowingly, and you really have to admire a piece of art that can make you abandon your moral code, but it's important to take a deep breath afterwards and realize what she’s really doing here. She’s killing people not concepts, not fear… people.

Of course it's all make believe. A work of fiction that explores the darkest corners of the mind. In that respect the movie does a fantastic job. But I hope everyone can enjoy it for what it is.

Sadly, The Brave One is not DVD worthy. Though this is one of the more interesting characters Foster has given us in her modern resurgence, I can't say that the character’s journey is one I'm anxious to revisit. I'd just as soon turn to Panic Room or to a lesser degree Flight Plan for a backdrop that wraps around its star with the same compelling intensity. To be fair though if any of these movies popped up on my TV flipping I’d be hard pressed to change the channel. Even the weakest of the bunch Flight Plan kept me in bed an hour longer than I had planned a few Sunday’s back. None of the movies are perfect, but they are fun to watch.

Reservation Road - More of the same but this time…. Make it classy! 2007 offers us another revenge movie, this time from director Terry George who is following up Hotel Rwanda with a completely different perspective on the unjust loss of a child and how we deal with that in Reservation Road.

As we move one week closer to Oscar and one week further away from the flash and bang of the summer season, the revenge movie is being given a much-needed polish of reality with a touch of heart. Where Death Sentence took a violent approach on revenge, and The Brave One focused less on exploding knee caps in favor of a little humanity, Reservation Road pushes the other extreme telling the story of what we would more than likely do if a loved one was wrongly taken from us. Because honestly, we're not going to go on a killing spree, we're not going to quip snappy one-liners while reclaiming our dog, we're going to clumsily blurt obscenities through a river of tears and snot when we confront the person responsible for changing our lives forever.

And even though I enjoyed those two films that explored the other extreme and middle of the road of revenge, I'm very excited about this honest look at a universal subject. And with a cast like Jennifer Connely, Mark Ruffalo and Joaquin Phoenix involved, you know you're in good hands.

I wanted to thank Ryan Estrada again for his great guest strip yesterday. And congratulations again on his new venture Cartoon Commune.

I saw a lot of movies this weekend and I'm anxious to get some comics and reviews up for all of them. But I will be chatting them up tonight, as I do every Monday evening, on the Triple Feature. Tom, Gordon, Brain and I will be focusing on The Brave One, Mr. Woodcock, and for as little amount of time as possible, Dragon Wars. I'm still horrified that I was actually talked into seeing that. For the full story be sure to tune in tonight at 10pm!