CinemaNow - The Brave One

Jodie Foster is inevitably being described as a female Charles Bronson in her role as Erica Bain, a New York woman bent on killing the men who brutally attacked her and murdered her fiance in Central Park. Claudia Puig in USA Today dismisses The Brave One as "a well-made but predictable take on the revenge fantasy thriller, with a female twist." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal describes it as "repetitive rather than resonant, an over-calculated, under-ventilated studio production -- even paranoid thrillers need to breathe -- whose plot machinery grinds grim and coarse." A.O. Scott in the New York Times adds that while the vigilante plot may "be viscerally satisfying [it] is a sign of just how cowardly The Brave One really is. It's a pro-lynching movie that even liberals can love." In a similar vein, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times comments that the movie amounts to an "unwise attempt to have it all, to attract the sensitive audience that swoons at Ms. Foster's nuanced performances as well as the yahoos who scream when evil blood is spilt." It would appear that Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post would count himself among the yahoos. "You may hate yourself for yielding to the expertise of the manipulation," he writes, "but the vicarious thrill of The Brave One is the sense of pulling your own trigger on pure evil and watching the bullet tear through." And Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune suggests that while the film may never be regarded as a classic, "it's the work of first-rate filmmakers and actors doing everything they can to find the truth in the pulp and the bloodlust."

"The Brave One"...I saw this and wondered...My fave Ms Jodie Foster starring in a movie I neither saw advertised on television or the newspaper. I don't think it even appeared at a theater in my small city.Then I saw her on "The Tonight Show" and, as sitting, being asked about a present movie, it smacked me in the face that she mentioned "The Brave One" in her reply. As Ms Foster did this she glanced towards the ausience, as all actor's mentioning a movie do, and there was no reaction, no applause and Leno did nothing to prop Ms Foster's statement or credit the worthiness of "The Brave One".You want to know why? Because it's a damn great movie promoting (purposely or not) the right for individual's to carry a weapon and the right to use it without being dragged into court if one does so in true self defense.I thought of Bernard Getz and the keel haul that man went through when he did exactly what one scene in this movie portrayed. I thought our legal system, the government, put an innocent man at the stake and he was pounded into oblivion by them, the law, the do-gooders who know nothing of living in a violent area and the self rightous saying he took the law into his own hands. Then the families of the no good thieves spoke out and he received even more humiliation and a harder line by the law."The Brave One" begins tenderly, Ms Foster in earnest persuit of invitation cards for a wedding that the love of her life really doesn't want but he's going along with it. They are in love.All leading to the meeting of a group of thugs with phone video who are high, drunk and will not be turned away from comitting extreme violent acts on the two and their dog as they stroll the park no matter what is offered.The fiancee ends up dead and Ms Jodie Foster's charater is terribly beaten and has a bout with agorphobia, which I am well aquainted with and recognised immediatley when portayed so well on screen, which she overcomes and finally she gets outside again. She remains a terrified woman who is bold but is growing distant, feeling seperated but maintaining a hold on purpose. Another mind altering affect of violence I recognised as I am familiar with that also after returning from Viet Nam.I urge you to see this movie. "The Brave One" is NOT a "B" movie Ms Foster took on, which I thought at first, but a well rounded cast, excellent really, pulls you into this story and answers, not asks, the question quite clearly.After viewing 'The Brave One" I realised why I hadn't heard of it (I love anything with Jodie Foster) and why the movie was put on "hush" mode and the audience that night, who obviosly hadn't seen or heard of it either, as I was watching Leno, proved to me this government has a hand deeper than imagined into what is made widely available and what is made under the Constitution but, more or less, that's it. It's made. It is not publicised for the masses! WATCH IT!