Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Good movie but grossly overrated

Brilliant and touching

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Brutal drama. Story is similar as in "I Spit on Your Grave", but instead of brutal horror manner, it's done as mainstream drama. Jodie Foster is expectedly excellent. Movie blurs the line between good and evil in a way that will appeal both to mainstream audience and fans of brutal horrors.8/10

I just watched the movie on a Serbian cable channel, blissfully ignorant about it, and after the opening sequence in which Jodie Foster¨s character suffered that tragedy, I rushed to my computer to check the plot; I expected some boring, spiritual post-postmodern stuff like a mixture of "Ghost" movie and finding peace in meeting "a good person" who is soul twin of lost beloved one, and so on, but no - I discovered it is a "Death Wish" remake, updated in terms of political and gender correctness (and also in terms of mobile technology).And I loved it, specially compared to move "Larry Crowne" who I saw couple of days earlier on the same channel, and I discovered I had no patience anymore for such romance lemonades, and I was happy to continue watching "The Brave One".It's been quite a while since I wrote my last review, 15 years or so (!; in the mean time Mr. Ebert passed away...), and this probably doesn't look like a review at all, rather more like a blog of a wannabe vigilante.However, anyways, I got thrilled by the movie. Both films - I mean both "Larry Crowne" and "The Brave One" are equally improbable and spectator must suspend indeed disbelief for both, but "The Brave One" feels so good, it so good to see thugs killed, shot, smashed, destroyed.The plot is more elaborate and ethically better explained than in "Death Wish 1 and 2", it began as I said as predictable story of traumatized woman who needs a shrink who would tell her at the end of the film "It's not your fault", because the good shrinks always tells those words and the patient always get cured after that. I even thought it was a true story, as for example about that woman who recognized black cop as a culprit and he got sentenced to 20 years or to life, and I thought it was going to be another heavy film, only less convincing than an average episode for CBS Reality channel.But no, "The Brave One" was more plausible than kitchen reality programme with Anthony Burdain "The Taste" with its bland, fake quarrels.I loved silent agreement between Jodie Foster and Terence Howard. His character - homicide detective with a soul - is in fact most unbelievable character, but it is like libretto in opera: sounds silly, but singers (that is actors) make it credible. It is hard to imagine such police officer in real life, but Howard did it.Last third of the movie is little bit too slow in this complicated fermentation of their relationship, but in that respect the movie is building some more upon "Death Wish", creating some biblical dilemmas and abandoning concept of pure urban western story line.The film has but one comical relief but it is a good one; when young pot smoker is giving description for photo robot, and when he is describing Jodie's character and when he is talking about arrrs, breasts etc, and female police officer at the computer is just shaking her head on it. I can easily imagine audience giggling in the cinemas and long after the film is finished, when people for example stopped over in a pub for a drink.Tho most improbable thing in the film is that point when Jodie's character lost her Ipod in the subway (after very second vigilante shooting) they did not manage to discover anything. I mean, in this time when even hotmail.com is helplessly slowed down so as NSA can read each mail first and when satellites can trace your phones via FB accounts, com'on, that is ludicrous, but I still love that film.This is "Death Wish" free of sexism and open to women's point of view.What a great movie. I assume this film amongst other movies and books is announcing this populist wave which was crowned by Mr. Trump's victory. Those waves alternates every 11-14 years. For example W. Wellman's western "The Ox-Bow Incident" with Henry Fonda from 1943 is typical leftist, liberal movie against lynch, and 14 years later Fonda repeated same liberal attitude in Mr. Lummet's "12 Angry Men". In the mean time we saw right-wing paranoid movies in same time circles.What about "The Brave One", one might ask, is it leftists' movie or right-wing? It is right-wing, in disguise of lonesome woman's revenge. But it's just a theory, perhaps for some film columnist.This movie is soothing balsam for scared people's wounded hearts. One cannot believe any more that Tom Hanks character "Larry Crowne" can seduce Julia Roberts bitchhhy character (Hanks as a producer and actor even managed to destroy "Charlie Wilson's War" which had such a potential!), nor in ghosts who can time travel, neither in guarding angels and White Light at the end of a tunnel. But one WANTS to believe that thugs get punished in a foreseeable future.If it is not possible, it should have been possible.

Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) is a radio host who is getting married to David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews) living in NYC. While walking in the park, their dog runs off. They find the dog being held by three thugs. A fight breaks out and David is beaten to death. Erica is badly injured. The police seems unhelpful. She is suffering from the trauma and buys an unlicensed gun. She witnesses a low life husband killing his wife in a convenience store and she shoots him dead in self defense. Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) is obsessed with his cases. He investigates the shooting with his partner Vitale (Nicky Katt). A couple of black thugs steal an iPod from a subway rider and tries to threaten Erica. So she shoots them dead. Mercer also investigates and suspects a vigilante. He's a fan of her and recognizes her at the crime scene. She starts interviewing him. She tries to rescue a girl but the girl ends up in the hospital. He tells her about a case he's working on and she pushes the bad guy off a building. He brings Erica in to interview the girl and she refuses to identify anybody. The iPod kid gives a sketch that looks like Erica. Mercer takes her in to identify her attacker but she lets him go. Mercer suspects Erica as she tracks down her attackers.The thugs are too thuggy. The cops are too coppy. The criminals all look like criminals. Everything is too on the nose. That part feels very manufactured. Maybe if she runs into just one crime in her spree, then all this wouldn't feel too coincidental. Neil Jordan is a great director and he puts Jodie Foster to good use. He's digging deep into her psyche but it's not ringing true. I don't put it on the actors or the director as much as on the script. I have no problems with the quiet intensity this movie is aiming for. Neither do I have any problems with the murky morality of the ending. The main problem for me is the lack of realism.

... can cross that line. Said to all who forgot it or like do deny.What remains when happiness disappears and you're willing not to fake yourself but then faking yourself with shootings in which 'the others' die instantly without a scream and your gun is always loaded?I once held a drawn bow in my hand and know how a loaded weapon changes the feeling of the own body. Jodie Foster knows it and although she had inscribed her face to a character who makes use of the light trigger she always makes clear that this is not the only way. The movie shows full respect from different views to this fundamental issue by leaving enough silence to become aware about the movie in spectator's brain.The story seems only like a muzzy frame disintegrating itself when ever it is possible while "making a movie".Every single human being has to figure out how to live with fear - how to live at all, even "with a grudge". That's hard, yes.What can happen when some of the best meet and do their best to make art out of a "kind-of-standard-topic" using the financial power, knowledge and the equipment of the worlds most famous entertainment industries? You can see it when watching "The Brave One". The story disappears more and more every time I watch this magnificent work, but what I see still grips me tight and I feel my face getting wet. Mostly silent. Listen to Jodie Foster's voice during the 2 minutes (from the last caller on) when the first of her shots is heard again and Erica leaves the studio at 1:14:25. Emily Dickinsons poem „Death" spoken with a dark voice while putting gloves on - ennobled by a touch of music - just as she is called by name on the street in the night, between the last time she rather voiceless had tried to be received by a police officer and then calling the new friend on the phone in the night while waiting for the next one to kill. Anyway.~ * ~In my mind "The Brave One" is already far beyond questions about law or morality. There is no cheat code and no ace up my sleeve. Even if I think so. But then a reminder asks me to listen again carefully how heart and brain sound together.Some thankful words to Ene Oloja: Without you this film was simply impossible. Although this is only a story someone with open eyes had to wipe up the blood. God is a woman.How to come to an end? Simply stop writing and post the lines to where it's intended to.And forget about Erica Bain - if I can.