The Brave One (2007): Maybe I'm Just Getting Desensitized
Written: Sep 19 '07
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Awesome premise, gotta love revenge!
Cons: Script is flim-flam, the whole thing is just a little too "full of itself".
The Bottom Line: Jodie Foster gets locked in a proverbial panic room and... dude, did I just say panic room?
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| flamepillar's Full Review: The Brave One |
It seems like the older I get, the darker of a person I become. Whether it's a form of adaptation, being influenced by what I see or just plain old self-indulgence, it's anybody's guess. But much like Jodie Foster's character, I find myself starting to become attracted to this "f*ck the world" persona, this stranger, mostly 'cause it's a way of getting aggression out, and very rarely if at all do I allow anyone else to see that person.
But he's there.
So at the beginning of this movie, we have Jodie Foster paired with Naveen Andrews, and already I'm feeling awkward. Because I can only see Naveen Andrews as the character of Sayid on "Lost". Without the accent (much less the assertive attitude) he seems so wishy-washy in comparison. Well, it isn't long before they happen to be walking down the streets and they are jumped by three dudes. What follows is an awfully disturbing scene of brutality against them.
The following ten or so minutes of the film are quite the blur in this memory of mine. All I can seem to recall are some pretentious "wavy" camera shots behind Jodie as she walks in slo-mo through a hallway far too dark for me to believe that she's even remotely familiar with it. (Supposedly they are the hallways outside her apartment.) I remember scenes of sex between Jodie and Naveen that are somewhat tastelessly intercut with the brutal scenes that marked the taking of his life, which yet again is another example of the movies trying to get us to admit that we get turned on by torture. Good luck with THAT. I remember a lot of ambient music and dreary colors and a whole lot of blurry, watery images. Like, totally surreal dude.
But slowly, Jodie manages to regain her composure and try her hand at work again. Work in this case being hosting a talk radio station. Now for a second I got confused, because in one of the movie previews beforehand, there was a preview for Will Smith in a movie called "I Am Legend" and in the preview, he broadcasts himself calling out for survivors. So for a second I forgot which movie was which. Don't ya hate it when that happens?
Well, Jodie starts to realize that life ain't the Corona commercial she had made it out to be and she decides to get herself a gun. For no other reason than that it serves the plot of the movie, she says she needs it right away. 30 day waiting period ensures that won't happen, but someone in the gun store who apparently makes his living off of people in Jodie's situation follows her out and offers her one for a thousand dollars. (Sure hope Sayid got life insurance!)
I'm not even done with what the preview for this film gives away yet. So it's not even a few days later, Jodie has a chance encounter with a robber in a grocery store. And just to make damn sure the audience WANTS this piece of trash to die, he shoots a pregnant woman behind the counter without even giving her the chance to at least cooperate. Jodie turns around and caps his asss, then runs for the hills.
But she gains a certain sense of empowerment from this whole "vigilante" thing as they come to call it, and goes out of her way to get into more situations like that so that she can kill some more baddies. This is about where the police detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) comes in. And maybe I'll just stop there.
Terrence Howard shows great poise under pressure as he attempts to make what is actually a subpar script seem believable. Jodie Foster is one of those actresses who is still terrific, but she's also one of the types that you can only take so much before you get tired of her. Her performance here is as wooden as it probably should be, I guess the problem is that people who go through this kind of trauma aren't really that interesting to watch. Unless of course they're channeling their suffering into psychosis.
I heard somewhere before seeing the film that the script sounded like it was written by a 12-year old, and somehow that made me want to see it more, because immaturity is one of my guilty pleasures. Unfortunately, the movie is not so much immature as it is ambivalent. Maybe what the film really wants is for someone besides itself to come out and say that human life (especially that whose free will is used for taking other lives) isn't as "precious" as we make it up to be. Maybe the film wants someone besides itself to come out and say that it's okay to kill three criminals to save one person, if the person you're saving is someone who actually contributes to society. Maybe the film wants someone beisdes itself to come out and say that even if human life were precious, we still have to consider the possibility that some lives are worth more than others. (Just ask any smoker who has insurance.) Unfortunately, it comes down to a whole lot of impotent rage. Well, what was I saying? The script. Yeah, it would've been nice if there had been more of a debate about what she was doing, rather than characters shooting off proverbs that are only pertinent to one aspect of the issue.
There was some catharsis to be had. I mean, I'll admit, when she shot the guys in the subway, I actually clenched my left fist and shook it a little bit. But much of what she had to say on the talk radio station was the same kind of stuff you hear all the time about there being another person inside of us. Hope Billy Joel doesn't go see this movie, 'cause they might as well have just read off the lyrics to his song "The Stranger". By the end, I wasn't sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that I was only feeling Jodie's rage about up to the 10% marker. In the last ten or so minutes, they try to "bring back" the beating from the beginning (which was being taped) by having it sent to Jodie's character on a cell phone video. You know, the kind that plays at four frames a second. So that was kind of weird.
I know I keep wanting to say "I admit" before every sentence here, but again I admit. I am Revenge's #1 fan. I adore movies like "Enough", "Sleeping With The Enemy", hell even "The Karate Kid" just about brings me to tears I'm so happy to see the justice. Something about this just didn't feel the same. Or maybe I'm just getting desensitized.
Recommended:
No
Movie Mood: Serious Movie
Viewing Method: Studio Screening/Premiere
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Script
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flamepillar
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