The Brave One, though well cast and smoothly directed, is just as crude and ugly as you want it to be.
The Brave One (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:178
Fresh:77
Rotten:101
Average Rating:5.6/10
Consensus: Magnetic by between Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard can't quite compensate for The Brave One's problematic and unconvincing eye-for-an-eye moral.
Runtime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Genre: Justice, Thriller, Theatrical Release, New York City, Revenge
US Box Office: $36,765,734
Synopsis: For Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), the streets of New York are both her home and her livelihood. She shares the sounds and the stories of her beloved city with her radio audience as the host of the... For Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), the streets of New York are both her home and her livelihood. She shares the sounds and the stories of her beloved city with her radio audience as the host of the show "Street Walk." At night, she goes home to the love of her life, her fiance David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews). But everything Erica knows and loves is ripped from her on one terrible night when she and David are ambushed in a random, vicious attack that leaves David dead and Erica close to it. Though Erica's broken body heals, deeper wounds remain--the devastation of losing David and, even more overwhelming, a suffocating fear that haunts her every step. The city streets she had once loved to roam, even places that had been warm and familiar, now feel strange and threatening. When the fear finally becomes too much to bear, Erica makes a fateful decision to arm herself against it. The gun in her hand becomes a tangible way to protect herself from an intangible enemy...or so she thinks. The first time she shoots someone, it is kill or be killed. The second time is also in self-defense...or did she make a choice not to take herself out of harm's way? The fear that had once paralyzed her has been replaced by something else...something that drives her to reclaim the life that was taken from her that night...something that Erica does not even recognize in herself. Stories of an anonymous vigilante grip the city, and NYPD detective Sean Mercer (Terrence Howard) becomes increasingly determined to track down the killer. As he pieces together the clues, the evidence begins to point not to a guy with a gun...but a woman with a grudge. With Mercer closing in and her own conscience trying her, Erica must decide whether her quest for some form of justice, and even vengeance, is truly the right path, or if she has become the very thing she is hunting. Two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster ("The Silence of the Lambs," "The Accused") and Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard ("Hustle & Flow," "Crash") star in "The Brave One." The film is directed by Academy Award winner Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game") and produced by Joel Silver ("The Matrix" trilogy, "V For Vendetta") and Susan Downey ("Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang"). The main cast also includes Naveen Andrews (TV's "Lost," "The English Patient") as David, Erica's fiance; Nicky Katt ("Grindhouse") as Mercer's partner, Detective Vitale; and Academy Award winner Mary Steenburgen ("Melvin and Howard") as Carol, Erica's boss at the radio station. Jordan directed "The Brave One" from a screenplay by Roderick Taylor & Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort, story by Roderick Taylor & Bruce A. Taylor. Herbert W. Gains, Jodie Foster, Dana Goldberg and Bruce Berman served as executive producers. The behind-the-scenes creative team included Oscar-winning director of photography Philippe Rousselot ("A River Runs Through It"), marking his fourth collaboration with Jordan, production designer Kristi Zea ("The Departed"), Jordan's longtime editor Tony Lawson ("Michael Collins," "The End of the Affair"), costume designer Catherine Thomas ("Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2") and Oscar-nominated composer Dario Marianelli ("Pride & Prejudice"). "The Brave One" is a Warner Bros. Pictures presentation, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, of a Silver Pictures Production. "The Brave One" has been rated R by the MPAA for strong violence, language and some sexuality. --© Warner Bros [More]
Starring: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt
Starring: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt, Mary Steenburgen
Director: Neil Jordan
Director: Neil Jordan
Screenwriter: Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor, Cynthia Mort
Story: Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor
Producer: Joel Silver, Susan Downey
Composer: Dario Marianelli
Studio: Warner Bros.
Reviews for The Brave One
There's a lot to admire in The Brave One. It just doesn't cut as deeply as it needs to.
Despite some quality performances, from both Foster and her co-star, Terrence Howard, The Brave One is every bit as ludicrous and every bit as wrong-headed and distasteful as those other [vigilante] films.
The finale is bad enough to make you wish the actress were working more often, so that the blatantly commercial stuff wasn't all she was letting us see.
Has neither the depth of character nor of theme to justify the condoning of her actions.
You may hate yourself for yielding to the expertise of the manipulation, 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.
The Brave One is Death Wish with a guilty conscience, and while it may be a bit of a hypocrite as vigilante thrillers go, the internal contradictions of the thing make for a very interesting picture.
Everything about Foster's ocular intensity is riveting, but little in this hushed vigilante drama makes sense.
The Brave One wins out, if nothing else, because it knows the power of the gun.
Riddled with illogical plot contrivances, pat irony, half-formed subplots, and a climax that stretches the boundaries of what can be swallowed.
The Brave One thinks it has something to say about how we live in this real world today, and it wants to say it while hoping we'll overlook one plot hole after another.
Both viewers and the characters onscreen must deal with the fact that we like when criminals get what's coming to them, regardless of who's pulling the trigger.
Unfortunately, the plotting in The Brave One is rather pedestrian and often flawed, undermining this film’s potential for greatness.
You half expect the CSI: New York characters played by Gary Sinise and Mila Karakanedes to show up at the first, second or third crime scenes.
Jordan’s ballsy and sometimes bonkers movie is more ambitious and alive -- more worth writing, talking and thinking about -- than anything that has tumbled off the Hollywood assembly line in a good long while.
It's a throwback girl-with-a-gun exploitation tale, as well as an evolved feminist fable; and an impeccable dissection of gun control, as well as a wicked mockery of NRA mentality.
The very fact that it's so well-made actually makes the picture all the more morally dubious.
Latest News for The Brave One
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