When You Death Wish Upon a Star

The Brave One

(R)

originally published September 19, 2007

Moments exist in new vigilante fantasy The Brave One, where, momentarily, vengeance seems right and just, the civilized response to a civilization whose foundations - both moral and judicial - are cracking. Unlike August’s Death Sentence, an ethically ambiguous (actually, the film was a moral non-starter) slice of the old ultraviolence, The Brave One dares to question vigilantism’s godlike arrogance, its Old Testament-style, “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” Wild West-brand of justice more than any film in the genre’s semi-proud history.

Forged in the fires of the 1970s, a decade filled with crises (presidential, economic, environmental, military and social), the genre is defined by the 1974 “classic,” Death Wish, featuring Charles Bronson’s iconic portrayal of Paul Kersey, an everyman who avenges his wife and daughter with a criminal killing spree. Several critics have posited similarities between the salad days of '70s vigilantism and its resurgence in the '00s. An unpopular president, an unwinnable war, rising gas prices and cultural upheaval have all returned. Why shouldn’t the one-man - or woman - judge, jury and executioner? (We can’t be that far away from a remake of The Star Chamber, the 1983 alternative justice flick starring Michael Douglas as an idealistic young judge turned member of a hitman-hiring secret court.)

In The Brave One, radio personality Erica Bain (two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster), host of the program, “Street Walk,” where she waxes poetic about the city she loves, and her fiancé, David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews, Sayid of ABC’s “Lost”), are assaulted while walking their dog through Central Park. The brutalization, digitally captured by the gang of thugs on a cell phone, leaves Erica damaged and comatose. David is savagely beaten to death with a pipe. Broken mentally and physically, Erica is now terrified of the streets she once called home. Her fear leads her to illegally purchase a gun; that gun leads her to kill a man in self-defense. Soon, Erica is simultaneously rebuilding and losing herself to an empowering killing spree being investigated by a new acquaintance, Detective Sean Mercer (Terrence Howard).

Moral quandaries abound in The Brave One. Director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) and writers Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort don’t revel in the blood and gristle of Erica’s conquests (that’s more the style of Death Sentence’s James Wan, though the “heroes” of both The Brave One and Death Sentence do share a predilection for the cleansing - but not purifying - post-first kill shower); the kills are too quick and impersonal to salaciously gratify. Instead, Jordan and company bring weighty questions of conscience into the proceedings. Who is Erica becoming? What part of herself has she spent to regain the upper hand against fear? Will she ever be able to find herself again or have her actions changed her forever?

The Brave One offers few simple answers. What the film presents in place of answers is humanity aptly represented by the talented duo of Foster and Howard. Whether cowering, cruel or conscience-plagued, The Brave One is Erica and Erica is Foster. Yet she lacks the sexuality to sell the few early scenes of domestic bliss with Andrews and later flirtation with Mercer. (The sole sex scene, which Jordan skillfully splices with Erica and David’s torn bodies being denuded in the hospital, requires the obvious service of a body double.) Foster connects most powerfully and emotionally with characters who are alone due to loss. As the recently divorced NYPD detective, Howard is merely additional flavoring. This fine actor seasons the film as little more than a glorified almost-love interest. Still, he shines no matter what he is asked to do, even when that request amounts to little more than looking the part of a conscientious, concerned, morally assured policeman.

Fingering the politics of the vigilante film and discerning whether or not they matter is tricky. Most would clothe this entire genre in the coat of conservatism. Vigilantes are pro-gun and obviously pro-death penalty, yet they lack a fundamental faith in the system of law and order. An independent, fortysomething professional woman engaged to a foreigner, Erica obviously begins the film as liberal as Charlie Bronson’s conscientious objector. Untrained in gunplay, Erica finds solace in the authority of a firearm, recasting herself as a conservative cowboy doling out justice as she sees fit, but she always questions her actions, wondering whether she’s become what she is fighting. Be it ultimately left or right, The Brave One turns flip in its climax, seemingly negating the hemming and hawing of the previous two hours. (However, the deadpan levity of Nicky Katt, as Mercer’s partner, provides a much-needed respite from Foster’s tortured hand-wringing.) With its heady intellectualizing of vigilantism, The Brave One denies the audience vigilante cinema’s greatest asset, the violent catharsis. Overcorrecting the moral deficiency of Death Sentence and its ilk, The Brave One entertains so many unanswerable, high-minded queries that it fails to entertainingly answer any of them.

Drew Wheeler