New York radio personality Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) has her life torn asunder when she and her boyfriend emergency room doctor David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews) brutally attacked and beaten in Central Park. She survived, he didn’t, and the murderers are still out there somewhere in the city leaving the woman cowering inside her apartment in fear.

Jodie Foster takes decisive action in Warner Bros.' The Brave One

But Erica can’t stay indoors forever, and soon she is silently trolling the most dangerous streets and the darkest subways looking for something she can’t quite put her finger on. Can’t put a finger on, that is, until she grabs a hold of her first gun and shoots her first criminal leaving him bleeding to death inside a smashed up convenience store.

Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) has secrets of his own, a three-year-old case and his inability to get anything done about it starting to eat away at the very corners of his soul. Yet he does not believe in taking the law into his own hands, the career policeman doing his best to continue believing justice can and will be served. So he will catch this vigilante even if he recognizes they might be doing some semblance of good within his fair city because that is his job, and no one – not matter what the reason – is above the law.

It is plainly obvious that Neil Jordan’s (Breakfast on Pluto) The Brave One, no matter what its higher aspirations, is really nothing more highbrow then a gender-swapped variation on Michael Winner’s 1974 Charles Bronsan thriller Death Wish. Without question, this is the better picture made by a more talented craftsman and filled with better actors in virtually all of the key roles. That said, it is nowhere near as entertaining, and in the grand scheme of things walking out of the theater having enjoyed yourself is far more enjoyable then going into the street feeling beaten down by a bunch of conflicting ideas smashed against your forehead by a didactic sledgehammer.

Which, in the end, is really too bad because there is a lot about this film that’s an absolute knockout. Foster and Howard make for an electrically engaging pair, the two of them exuding a mutually browbeaten chemistry that’s absolutely astonishing. A scene late in the picture over a cup of a coffee is one of the best I’ve seen all year, the profound hurt dripping from one actor’s face only to be replaced by an icy resolve on the others simply took my breath. This is what great acting is all about, and anyone who should ever be curious to see what it looks like this is a scene they could start their education with right here.

If only this (and a few more minutes like them) could make up for the script’s insistence at trying to walk an uncomfortably disconcerting middle ground. The film doesn’t know whether it should celebrate Erica’s evolution into a feminine vigilante warrior or condemn it. I kept feeling like I should be feeling sorry for the girl, pity what it is life in the city and head-butting against an uncaring bureaucracy has done to the woman, but I never did.

In the end it gets even worse. The climax makes no sense and feels like it has been transplanted onto movie from some other dimension solely for the express purpose of generating a few whoops and hollers from the audience. Problem is, any points the filmmakers were trying to make are completely lost in the masochistic bloodthirsty chaos, one of the principals in particular doing something so completely out of character it completely contradicts every single other thing they did in each of their scenes along the way. 

Sitting here now writing I find I’m getting even more aggravated then I was sitting in the theater. I wanted to like this film, wanted to like it a lot. There are some dynamite moments, some of it is surprisingly (maybe even uncomfortably) funny and the acting by pretty much all involved is simply off the hook. But it just doesn’t work, Jordan and company never crafting a cohesive message that kept me locked into its nuances beginning to end. Worse, it ends horribly making The Brave One a thriller where all I really wanted to do was throw up my arms and scream in frustration when it was finally over.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4) 

Additional Links:

-  The Brave One Theatrical Trailer