The Brave One Review
Suggestions
Can watch again
NA
Good for kids
NA
Good for dates
NA
Wait for OTT
NA
Dum dum dum honey what have you done, dum dum dum that's the sound of my gun. Yes, Jodie's got a gun.
You know what? (Forgive the bad pun, while you're at it) Jodie, it seems, always has a gun. Having made her career out of making films about characters on the edge, and psychoanalyzing traumatized and not too well adjusted human beings, this is like homecoming for Jodie Foster. This, in many many ways, is not just a Jodie Foster film. It might well be THE Jodie Foster film, and I don't mean that in a good way.
It begins almost innocuously, with Foster playing Erica Bain, a happy girl, giddy in love with a decent doctor guy (Naveen Andrews), her fiancé. She is a Radio talk show host in New York, one of the careers that may not have anything to do with a typical Foster film, but it later turns out it is, anyway. A halt to this romcom comes within the first 10 minutes or so when she and her fiancé are attacked in Central Park.
Three street punks beat her up and put her in a coma, and the fiancé does not make it. The light-hearted woman emerges out of her cocoon a darker meaner woman, the kind we all know so well. The first thing she does is to try and get a gun, and things immediately go wrong when she decides not to wait for 30 days to get a license, and instead buys one off the streets. So begins one woman's crusade against the lowlifes of her city, and her catharsis comes when she finds the punks that made her who she is.
This may be a weak point being as we have seen so many on-the-edge Jodies in her illustrious career, but really, this time you can't help but be perversely fascinated with the character that she dishes up - a muddy reflection of all the traumatic stress around her, with no small amounts of moral ambiguity about her actions. It is enthralling to watch her go through these motions, and she never lets you down even once.
The problem is that the film is too literal-minded and simple to get the complexity of the character that Foster seems to understand. Director Neil Jordan serves the movie up devoid of any mood, or character. The problem with the incongruity of their visions is that the screenplay writers want to make a straight up vigilante film, with no thoughts about Bain's reaction to today's inhumane conditions, the only focus being personal gratification.
There is some half-hearted attempt to breathe more than the standard issue Charles Manson life to the film by trying to get into Bain's thoughts about a city she doesn't think is safe anymore. But the way it is presented makes Bain come across as half loony. Be it the weirdly decorated apartment, or the show that she starts doing again, recording sounds of the city and blaming it for her current problems.
To counter balance the grimness of Foster's portrayal, the script also tries to inject the film with a police investigation theme intertwined with this film. Terrence Howard plays Det. Mercer, a man who not only befriends Bain, but also is in charge of the murders she is committing while in vigilante mode. Stretching credibility beyond its limits, the film has one coincidence too many that convince the good detective that the woman he knows is the 'man' he has been looking for.
Doing that husky voice thing that she does, Foster is at home in this film, one that is populated by the kind of dank emotions that she likes to explore. Her portrayal is unusually intelligent for a film that takes the moral low road almost inevitably always. With some solid acting and smooth direction by Jordan, it would have been a crackerjack of a film, yet it isn't.
There is an inherent distaste for the material being approached in the script itself, and the ludicrous way it is written, especially the finale, it makes one believe that the screenplay writers did not, in fact, intend to do anything more than cash an easy pay cheque by re-writing Death Wish. There is some deft framing by Jordan, but really, was there even something to say in the film to begin with?
No, there wasn't. There is absolutely no recourse to Bain's actions or frankly her predicament about living a normal life after a traumatic episode. There is no heart in the way the finale lets loose a barrage of violence towards the evil doers all the while robbing Bain of her sanity. This film is a compromise between trashy pulp fiction and intelligent drama, and suffers for it. Pity, for there is some vintage Foster to enjoy it with.
You know what? (Forgive the bad pun, while you're at it) Jodie, it seems, always has a gun. Having made her career out of making films about characters on the edge, and psychoanalyzing traumatized and not too well adjusted human beings, this is like homecoming for Jodie Foster. This, in many many ways, is not just a Jodie Foster film. It might well be THE Jodie Foster film, and I don't mean that in a good way.
It begins almost innocuously, with Foster playing Erica Bain, a happy girl, giddy in love with a decent doctor guy (Naveen Andrews), her fiancé. She is a Radio talk show host in New York, one of the careers that may not have anything to do with a typical Foster film, but it later turns out it is, anyway. A halt to this romcom comes within the first 10 minutes or so when she and her fiancé are attacked in Central Park.
Three street punks beat her up and put her in a coma, and the fiancé does not make it. The light-hearted woman emerges out of her cocoon a darker meaner woman, the kind we all know so well. The first thing she does is to try and get a gun, and things immediately go wrong when she decides not to wait for 30 days to get a license, and instead buys one off the streets. So begins one woman's crusade against the lowlifes of her city, and her catharsis comes when she finds the punks that made her who she is.
This may be a weak point being as we have seen so many on-the-edge Jodies in her illustrious career, but really, this time you can't help but be perversely fascinated with the character that she dishes up - a muddy reflection of all the traumatic stress around her, with no small amounts of moral ambiguity about her actions. It is enthralling to watch her go through these motions, and she never lets you down even once.
The problem is that the film is too literal-minded and simple to get the complexity of the character that Foster seems to understand. Director Neil Jordan serves the movie up devoid of any mood, or character. The problem with the incongruity of their visions is that the screenplay writers want to make a straight up vigilante film, with no thoughts about Bain's reaction to today's inhumane conditions, the only focus being personal gratification.
There is some half-hearted attempt to breathe more than the standard issue Charles Manson life to the film by trying to get into Bain's thoughts about a city she doesn't think is safe anymore. But the way it is presented makes Bain come across as half loony. Be it the weirdly decorated apartment, or the show that she starts doing again, recording sounds of the city and blaming it for her current problems.
To counter balance the grimness of Foster's portrayal, the script also tries to inject the film with a police investigation theme intertwined with this film. Terrence Howard plays Det. Mercer, a man who not only befriends Bain, but also is in charge of the murders she is committing while in vigilante mode. Stretching credibility beyond its limits, the film has one coincidence too many that convince the good detective that the woman he knows is the 'man' he has been looking for.
Doing that husky voice thing that she does, Foster is at home in this film, one that is populated by the kind of dank emotions that she likes to explore. Her portrayal is unusually intelligent for a film that takes the moral low road almost inevitably always. With some solid acting and smooth direction by Jordan, it would have been a crackerjack of a film, yet it isn't.
There is an inherent distaste for the material being approached in the script itself, and the ludicrous way it is written, especially the finale, it makes one believe that the screenplay writers did not, in fact, intend to do anything more than cash an easy pay cheque by re-writing Death Wish. There is some deft framing by Jordan, but really, was there even something to say in the film to begin with?
No, there wasn't. There is absolutely no recourse to Bain's actions or frankly her predicament about living a normal life after a traumatic episode. There is no heart in the way the finale lets loose a barrage of violence towards the evil doers all the while robbing Bain of her sanity. This film is a compromise between trashy pulp fiction and intelligent drama, and suffers for it. Pity, for there is some vintage Foster to enjoy it with.
THE BRAVE ONE SNAPSHOT
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Cast
-
Music
-
Director
-
TheatresNot screening currently in any theatres in Hyderabad.
THE BRAVE ONE USER REVIEWS
1 - 1 OF 1 COMMENTS
7 USERS
Performances
Script
Music/Soundtrack
Visuals
NA
NA
NA
NA
Can watch again - NA
Good for kids - NA
Good for dates - NA
Wait for OTT - NA
Samrat..good review..but read Roger ebert's review given below. Roger ebert has given the film a 3.5 rating. Give me ur thoughts on it if u can...
................
The Brave One
Cast & CreditsErica: Jodie Foster
Mercer: Terrence Howard
David: Naveen Andrews
Carol: Mary Steenburgen
Nicole: Jane Adams
Det. Vitale: Nicky Katt
Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Neil Jordan. Written by Roderick Taylor and Bruce A. Taylor. Running time: 122 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, language and some sexuality). Opening today at local theaters.
By Roger Ebert
How many films have there been about victims of violence who turn into avengers? Charles Bronson made five "Death Wish" movies. Kevin Bacon's "Death Sentence" was released two weeks ago. How are we supposed to respond to them? When Bronson's kill count got above 50, why didn't the scales of justice snap? But now here is Jodie Foster, with a skilled co-star and director, to give us a movie that deals, really deals, with the issues involved.
Foster is such a good actress in thrillers: natural, unaffected, threatened, plucky, looking like she means it. And Neil Jordan's "The Brave One" gives her someone strong to play against. Terrence Howard and Foster are perfectly modulated in the kinds of scenes difficult for actors to play, where they both know more than they're saying, and they both know it.
Foster plays Erica, a talk jock on a New York radio station. She's engaged to a doctor named David (Naveen Andrews), they're in Central Park late one night, they're mugged, he's killed, and she's badly injured. When Erica is discharged, she's shaking with terror. Her illusion of a safe city life is destroyed. One day she buys a gun and practices on a shooting range where you can see fear turning into anger in her eyes.
Not long after, she's in a late-night convenience store (note: midnight strolls in Central Park rank second only to all-night stores in their movie-crime rates). A holdup takes place, there's violence, she kills a guy to save her life, and she feels -- well, how does she feel? Shaken, nauseous maybe, but certainly glad she's alive.
We've started with one of those admirable National Public Radio types whose voice is almost maddeningly sane and patient, and now we have a woman (narrating the movie, sometimes) who sounds more like she doesn't work upstairs over the saloon but she does own a piece of it. Erica has never seen herself as capable of killing, and now she grows addicted to it, offering herself as defenseless bait for criminals and then proving how terribly mistaken they were.
These are the general parameters of all vengeance movies. And often there's a cop on the case who grows curiously close to the killer. With Bronson, it was Vincent Gardenia. With Bacon, Aisha Tyler. With Foster, it's Terrence Howard, playing a detective named Mercer who is assigned to the original mugging, who chats with Erica, who observes there seem to be a lot of people in the city who would like to get even. "Yes," she says, "there must be a lot of us." Us. Curious word choice. Mercer hears it.
Now the movie becomes less about Erica's killings and more about how they make her feel. And about how she and Mercer begin to feel about each other -- not in a romantic way, although that scent is in the air, but as smart, wary people who slowly come to realize they share knowledge they dare not admit they share.
Neil Jordan, the director ("The Crying Game," "Michael Collins," "Breakfast on Pluto," "Mona Lisa," "The Good Thief") often makes movies about characters who are not who they seem, and about those who wonder if they can trust them. His characters are not deliberately deceptive, but have been pushed into their roles by their lives and don't see a way out. Often you sense in them a desperate urge to confess.
That kind of psychological suspense is what makes "The Brave One" spellbinding. The movie doesn't dine out on action scenes, but regards with great curiosity how these two people will end up. The movie's conclusion has a slight aroma of a studio rewrite; I'm not saying Jordan and his writers did revise it, but that the strict logic of the story should lead in a different direction. Where did Hollywood get the conviction that audiences demand an ending that lets them off the hook? Foster doesn't let herself off the hook in "The Brave One," and we should be as brave as she is.
Roger ebert.
............................
................
The Brave One
Cast & CreditsErica: Jodie Foster
Mercer: Terrence Howard
David: Naveen Andrews
Carol: Mary Steenburgen
Nicole: Jane Adams
Det. Vitale: Nicky Katt
Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Neil Jordan. Written by Roderick Taylor and Bruce A. Taylor. Running time: 122 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, language and some sexuality). Opening today at local theaters.
By Roger Ebert
How many films have there been about victims of violence who turn into avengers? Charles Bronson made five "Death Wish" movies. Kevin Bacon's "Death Sentence" was released two weeks ago. How are we supposed to respond to them? When Bronson's kill count got above 50, why didn't the scales of justice snap? But now here is Jodie Foster, with a skilled co-star and director, to give us a movie that deals, really deals, with the issues involved.
Foster is such a good actress in thrillers: natural, unaffected, threatened, plucky, looking like she means it. And Neil Jordan's "The Brave One" gives her someone strong to play against. Terrence Howard and Foster are perfectly modulated in the kinds of scenes difficult for actors to play, where they both know more than they're saying, and they both know it.
Foster plays Erica, a talk jock on a New York radio station. She's engaged to a doctor named David (Naveen Andrews), they're in Central Park late one night, they're mugged, he's killed, and she's badly injured. When Erica is discharged, she's shaking with terror. Her illusion of a safe city life is destroyed. One day she buys a gun and practices on a shooting range where you can see fear turning into anger in her eyes.
Not long after, she's in a late-night convenience store (note: midnight strolls in Central Park rank second only to all-night stores in their movie-crime rates). A holdup takes place, there's violence, she kills a guy to save her life, and she feels -- well, how does she feel? Shaken, nauseous maybe, but certainly glad she's alive.
We've started with one of those admirable National Public Radio types whose voice is almost maddeningly sane and patient, and now we have a woman (narrating the movie, sometimes) who sounds more like she doesn't work upstairs over the saloon but she does own a piece of it. Erica has never seen herself as capable of killing, and now she grows addicted to it, offering herself as defenseless bait for criminals and then proving how terribly mistaken they were.
These are the general parameters of all vengeance movies. And often there's a cop on the case who grows curiously close to the killer. With Bronson, it was Vincent Gardenia. With Bacon, Aisha Tyler. With Foster, it's Terrence Howard, playing a detective named Mercer who is assigned to the original mugging, who chats with Erica, who observes there seem to be a lot of people in the city who would like to get even. "Yes," she says, "there must be a lot of us." Us. Curious word choice. Mercer hears it.
Now the movie becomes less about Erica's killings and more about how they make her feel. And about how she and Mercer begin to feel about each other -- not in a romantic way, although that scent is in the air, but as smart, wary people who slowly come to realize they share knowledge they dare not admit they share.
Neil Jordan, the director ("The Crying Game," "Michael Collins," "Breakfast on Pluto," "Mona Lisa," "The Good Thief") often makes movies about characters who are not who they seem, and about those who wonder if they can trust them. His characters are not deliberately deceptive, but have been pushed into their roles by their lives and don't see a way out. Often you sense in them a desperate urge to confess.
That kind of psychological suspense is what makes "The Brave One" spellbinding. The movie doesn't dine out on action scenes, but regards with great curiosity how these two people will end up. The movie's conclusion has a slight aroma of a studio rewrite; I'm not saying Jordan and his writers did revise it, but that the strict logic of the story should lead in a different direction. Where did Hollywood get the conviction that audiences demand an ending that lets them off the hook? Foster doesn't let herself off the hook in "The Brave One," and we should be as brave as she is.
Roger ebert.
............................
RATING
4
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