The Brave One

Noel–The first 30 minutes of this move were very difficult to watch. Jodie’s character is supposed to be in love with her fiance when they are brutally attacked in a tunnel in New York. Now, I don’t know if Jodie Foster has ever been in love before, but if she has been in love, she was not able to portray that emotion in this movie. Instead, her character was reminiscent of the powerful woman she has become known for in Silence of the Lambs. Because of this, the first 30 minutes or so were just dreadful to me. Her acting was hard to watch, and she didn’t make me believe for one minute that she was in love and about to get married. Now, after the ooey, gooey, fake love moments, she finds her niche and slides right into her character’s next role, the hard-core, revengeful, vigilante crazy woman who kills anyone who tries to attack her, acts like they might attack her, or harm others. I hated the first part of the movie, but once she became the other side of her character that’s when things became more interesting and a little more believable; still not my favorite but it was decent. 2 ½ paws

Keith–The Brave One examines what it might take for a real person to become a vigilante, an examination of what might drive a normal woman to become judge, jury, and executioner. Foster plays Erica Bain, an engaged NPR-type radio show host. One night, she and her fiance are walking in Central Park, and are viciously robbed and attacked. Her fiance is killed, and Erica is basically robbed of her happy existence by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Deciding that revenge is the only way for her to cope with her loss, she proceeds to buy a gun and go on the prowl for her attackers, while developing a friendship with a cop working on the cases she creates with her vigilantism. Now, I’m hard wired in such a way that I would have had a gun to begin with in a New York park at night and this movie would have been over with in 30 minutes, but I could see something like this happening and a person becoming consumed with vengeance. They could have spiced it up, but they chose to shoot this film in a way that just shows what might actually happen in this scenario, instead of overwriting it and making it a bunch of fluffy action sequences. The decision at the end is interesting and makes you wonder if you would do the same in either one of the main characters’ plights in this movie. 3 paws