The Brave One

Stars Ty gives ***1/2

Title: The Brave One
Directed by Neil Jordan
Staring
Jodie Foster
Terrence Howard
Naveen Andrews
Nicky Katt
Release date September 14th 2007

This is a dramatic film about revenge. This movie is about a woman who was beaten along side her fiancee while they were out walking their dog at night in a park. She recovers, slowly, in the hospital. He does not. She simply tries to go on living. She's coping. She's trying to overcome her fear by walking out the front door of her apartment without being afraid. She's trying to get her mind off things and get her mind back on work. She's trying to be patient and understand that the NYPD are on her side and trying to help her. But it's a big city, and her case is cold. Her case is old and their are no witnesses. So, she goes and buys a gun. Well, she tries. New York isn't like Kansas. In New York, they have strict laws about guns and licenses. She doesn't want to wait. She gets a gun illegally and carries it in her purse like mace along with her lip gloss. It's there just in case. Just in case of what? This film asks the viewer a lot of questions. The film asks, "What would you do?" What would you do if you were in the back of a convenient store, picking out which soda you want when someone barges in, screaming, pulls out a gun and shoots the girl behind the counter in the chest over and over. You stand there, quietly, and in shock. Your cell rings. He hears you. He still has a gun and it still has bullets in it. He's alert. He's wide eyed. He knows your in there, somewhere. He comes looking for you. He slowly walks down the isle towards you. You have a gun. It's loaded. You've never shot a gun before in your life, let alone at a human being. What would you do? If you don't grab that gun and turn off the safety, soon, he is going to find you. You have only moments. If he even thinks that you are somewhere in his vicinity, he will shoot at you. His bullets will most likely hit you and kill you. He just murdered a girl in cold blood. Nothing is going to stop him from murdering you. Now is your chance. He doesn't see you, but you see him. You are directly across from him. The gun is in your hand. It's pointed at him. He still doesn't see you. All you have to do, is squeeze the trigger.
As for the more specific things about this movie like the acting or the story, the movie is intriguing. Jodie Foster (Silence of the lambs as Clarice Starling, Panic Room as Meg Altman, Inside Man as Madeleine White) as Erica Bain is and always will be a great actress, even though she kind of looks like a teenage boy in this movie. Terrence Howard (Iron Man as Col. James Rhodes aka Rhody, August Rush as Richard Jeffries, Idlewild as Trumpy) as Detective Mercer in my opinion is always better as a good guy than he is a bad guy, and Naveen Andrews (Sayid Jarrah on Lost) as David Kirmani is a interesting and unlikely candidate for a love interest. This film shows that racism and stereotyping doesn't apply to everyone. But for some it does. For some people, there is no difference between white and Indian, and black people aren't always gangsters holding guns and knives, mugging people on the subway. People from India aren't always terrorists. Sometimes, they're just some guy on street about to get married. But, some black people are out to mug, rape, and kill. But this movie clearly shows that a black person can kill, a latino can kill, a white collar male can kill, and a blonde white woman can kill too. This movie is not Kill Bill, though their are elements of that here. She was about to be married. She lost her fiance when he was brutally killed and she could not stop it. This movie also has elements of Death Sentence which coincidentally enough was released exactly two weeks before this movie, which is about a white collar male whose son is slaughtered during a gang initiation before his very eyes. He wants justice which he doesn't get, so he buys a gun and goes on a killing spree. The problem with that movie is that during his killing spree, he loses his wife and almost loses his other son to the gang that killed his pride and joy and gives himself a death sentence by finishing what he started, even though his youngest son will live to see another day as an orphan. Epic fail. Also, Kevin Bacon is not a bad @ss. Jodie Foster, on the hand is. Should you then watch this movie? It's pretty good. Hollywoodized of course. (If you don't know what Hollywoodized means, in a cop movie it means the cop always figures out the case in the end, even though in real life he would never act that way and never have a chance of figuring out what happened.) It's not overly gory and the language isn't bad. She doesn't get raped, so that is a plus. The ending is what gets me. It's not what I wanted even though part of me thinks I wanted that, but deep down I didn't want the movie to end the way it ended. I think if I was younger or less mature, I'd like the ending, but as a good friend of mine once said to me, "I'm older. I know where I stand. I can figure out what's right and what's wrong, and I can stand behind that." I think if you're a strong Christian or at least a highly mature person, you won't like this ending either. The ending to this film might have given the public what they wanted, but not necessarily what they needed. People are smart enough to pick out what they think is right. Hollywood is not.