How many revenge movies now?

''I always believed that fear belonged to other people. Weaker people. It never touched me. And then it did. And when it touches you, you know... that it's been there all along. Waiting beneath the surfaces of everything you loved.''

A woman struggles to recover from a brutal attack by setting out on a mission for revenge.

Jodie Foster: Erica Bain

Are these urban revenge movies becoming popular again? There was a surge of them in the early 1970s Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Taxi Driver that had a genuine purpose, albeit an entirely commercial one. The streets at that time were filled with lead.
But things have died down mostly since then. The children causing much of that trouble are now in their 50s and 60s and although urban crime still trumps rural crime, but here we go again. First Death Sentence and now The Brave One. Jody Foster and her boyfriend are walking their dog through the tunnels of Central Park at night and are set upon by three tattooed Hispanics who bash the man's head in, beat hell out of Foster, and kidnap their dog. The boyfriend is, or was English/Indian, so that the audience is less able to turn this into a strictly ethnic confrontation. Foster manages to come by an illegal gun and, in essence, goes through the same developmental stages as Charles Bronson did in Death Wish, but less schematically. It deals more with Jody Foster's character and her relationship to the detective on the case, Terrance Howard.

The film can deal with Foster's anguish and her ambivalent relationship to Howard because Foster is a much better performer than Charles Bronson was, and because Terrance Howard matches her charismatic ways. The plot is more complex than Death Wish too which also becomes its downfall, aimed at a more adult audience, or at least a more thoughtful one. If, after the first vigilante shooting or two, Charles Bronson seems happy as a clam, waltzing around in his spacious flat with the apricot carpets, playing Herb Alpert at high gain on his stereo, Jody Foster slouches around, ridden with guilt, and we the audience squirm around in unrelenting boredom.
At first she screws up at work at a radio show, concerning very poetic stories about the city and its history. But when she begins to talk about the vigilante killings and interviews Detective Howard, she begins to get some really sicko calls along the lines of "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." She even tries to confess, but her attempts are foiled by the police bureaucracy.
Jodie Foster gives a very good performance in The Brave One. She portrays this type of violent, morally corrupted character brilliantly but it's been done countless times before.
Terrence Howard is also great in this movie. Both have excellent chemistry together, and strengthen the film to a certain level. The Brave One looks visually pristine, and conveys some brilliant camera work, but not all of it works to a great effect. The scenes where Erica is absolutely traumatized and afraid to walk out her front door to face the world. The camera swayed back and forth to the sides in an almost dream-like way, and really captured the moment with essence. Whereas almost every time Erica killed somebody, everything just had to go slo-mo and show her facial expressions in fine detail. The slo-mo was properly used when Erica committed her first murder. But why keep doing this effect almost every time she committed murder? The camera work creates a great atmosphere in most of the film, but there a few scenes here that are just plain overkill.

''I'd say it was probably the fall that killed this guy... or it could be the crowbar embedded in his skull. I'd say it's about 50-50.''

The Brave One is very much about how these murders affect Erica emotionally. Her fiancé is killed by a group of thugs, and suddenly her love of New York City is turned upside down. She realizes that there is a dark side to the beloved city, and she says so on her radio show. I don't completely understand this though. Erica acts as if she never realized that violence can occur at night in the city, and that's pretty stupid. If she lived there all her life she must be either blind or very oblivious. Erica also seems to be a glutton for inhumane, murderous people. She really doesn't even have to go look for them, they just to come to her as if they're begging to be shot dead for their wrong-doing. The Brave One deals with the morals and proper use of violence strongly at first, and then suddenly it glorifies it. The ending is very negative, and completely immoral and inhumane. It also negates the purpose of Terrence Howard's character, which the movie spends so much time trying to evenly develop, and suddenly his morals take a U-turn. The morals in The Brave One become very fractured, and just plain shatter all over the place by the end. So violence is okay? It's a good thing to commit murder as long as it's for vengeance? I pretty much refuse to believe that. You know why? Because I have a conscience, which this film surely lacks. It is not right to take the life of another person, no matter how bad they are, or how much you hate them. Erica Bain sets out to stop these evil-doers, but in the end she is no better than the horrible people she kills.

Overall this movie is as predictable as it is unbelievable and ultimately questionable in its message. Jodie Foster plays that same role, that she has played two times already: a completely normal woman who is being driven over the edge when harm is done to her and her family (see Flightplan and Panic Room). It's time she tries new things for a change. Everything about The Brave One tastes stale. The movie is annoying in its superficiality and simplicity. One of these movies that will be forgotten in ten years time.

''There is no going back, to that other person, that other place. This thing, this stranger, she is all you are now.''

5/10